BS5I 


Keynote  Studies  in 
Keynote  Books  of  the  Bible 


The  James  Sprunt  Lectures  delivered  at 
Union  Theological  Seminary  in   Virginia 

Keynote  Studies 

in 

Keynote  Books  of  the  Bible 


By 
C.  ALPHONSO  SMITH,  Ph.  D.,LL.  D.,  L.  H.  D. 

Head  of  the  Department  of  English  in  the  United  States 

Naval  Academy,   Annapolis,    Md.,   and    Author    of 

"Studies  in  English  Syntax,^  ''Die  Amerikanische 

Literatur,^'  <■<■  What  Can  Literature  Do  For 

Me  ?  "  «« O.  Henry  Biography ;'  etc. 


New  York  Chicago 

Fleming    H.    Revell    Company 

London       and       Edinburgh 


Copyright,  19 19,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


New  York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago':  17  North  Wabash  Ave. 
London :  2 1  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh:      75    Princes    Street 


To  the  memory  of 
my  father 

J,  Henry  Smith,  D.  Z)., 

with  a  sense  of  indebtedtiess  that 
has  grown  with  every  passing  year 
this  book  is  dedicated  in  affectionate 
veneration 


THE  JAMES  SPRUNT  LECTURES 

IN  nineteen  hundred  and  eleven  Mr.  James  Sprunt 
of  Wilmington,  North  Carolina,  gave  to  the  Trustees 
of  Union  Theological  Seminary  in  Virginia  the  sum 
of  thirty  thousand  dollars,  for  the  purpose  of  establishing  a 
perpetual  lectureship,  vsrhich  would  enable  the  institution 
to  secure  from  time  to  time  the  services  of  distinguished 
ministers  and  authoritative  scholars,  outside  the  regular 
Faculty,  as  special  lecturers  on  subjects  connected  with 
various  departments  of  Christian  thought  and  Christian 
work.  The  lecturers  are  chosen  by  the  Faculty  of  the 
Seminary  and  a  committee  of  the  Board  of  Trustees,  and 
the  lectures  are  published  after  their  delivery  in  accord- 
ance with  a  contract  between  the  lecturer  and  these 
representatives  of  the  institution.  The  sixth  series  of 
lectures  on  this  foundation  is  presented  in  this  volume. 

W.  W.  MOORE. 
President  Union  Theological 
Seminary  in  Virginia. 


Preface 

THESE  lectures  are  a  part  of  a  course 
on  the  books  of  the  Bible  delivered 
before  the  Laymen's  League  of  the 
Presbyterian  Church  in  Charlottesville,  Vir- 
ginia. They  w^ere  revised  for  delivery  on 
the  James  Sprunt  Foundation  at  the  Union 
Theological  Seminary  of  Richmond,  Vir- 
ginia, in  March,  1917,  and  have  been  further 
revised  for  publication  in  book  form.  The 
initial  lecture,  however,  on  The  Keynote 
Method,  contains  the  plan  and  purpose  to 
which  I  have  tried  to  be  constant  from  first 
to  last.  If  in  their  present  form  these 
lectures  or  any  one  of  them  shall  aid  in 
bringing  the  Bible  "  home  to  men's  business 
and  bosoms,"  I  shall  be  deeply  grateful. 

C.  A.  S. 

United  States  Naval  Academy, 

Annapolis,  Md, 


Contents 

I. 

The  Keynote  Method 

II 

II. 

Genesis 

34 

III. 

Esther          

60 

IV. 

Job 

.      82 

V. 

Hosea 

III 

VI. 

The  Gospel  of  John     . 

.     129 

VII. 

The  Epistle  to  the  Romans 

.     148 

VIII. 

The  Epistle  to  the  Philippians 

.     i66 

IX. 

Revelation   .... 

.     180 

Index    

.     201 

I 

THE  KEYNOTE  METHOD 

I 

ONE  of  the  most  interesting  passages 
in  Prescott's  Conquest  of  Mexico  is 
that  in  which  he  describes  the  bat- 
tle of  Otumba.  A  mere  handful  of  Spaniards 
confronted  two  hundred  thousand  Aztecs. 
Cortez  thought,  says  Prescott,  that  his  last 
hour  had  come.  But  he  was  to  win  "  one  of 
the  most  remarkable  victories  ever  achieved 
in  the  New  World."  His  method  was  essen- 
tially the  method  that  we  shall  attempt  to 
follow  in  our  study  of  eight  books  of  the 
Bible.  Knowing  that  whatever  stability  or 
cohesiveness  the  Aztec  armies  had  was  due 
to  the  authority  of  their  commanders,  Cortez 
ordered  his  men  not  to  waste  their  strength 
on  the  military  underlings  opposed  to  them 
but  to  seek,  find,  and  strike  down  the  leaders. 
One  cacique  was  worth  a  thousand  men. 
Had  this  plan  not  been  followed  it  is  not 
likely  that  a  single  Spaniard  would  have 
II 


12  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

survived  to  tell  the  story  of  the  battle  of 
Otumba. 

Does  not  every  masterpiece  of  literature 
whether  of  prose  or  verse  contain  some  cen- 
tral and  commanding  thought  that  gives 
coherence  and  vitality  to  the  v^hole?  Is  it 
possible  to  understand  the  parts  without 
reference  to  their  common  contribution  to  a 
common  end?  Can  we  talk  intelligently 
about  the  metre  or  rhythm  or  stanzaic 
structure  of  a  poem  if  we  ignore  or  make 
secondary  the  thought  content  to  which 
these  are  but  ancillary?  Can  we  discuss 
understanding^  the  descriptive  or  narrative 
or  argumentative  skill  of  a  writer,  the  mould 
of  his  paragraphs,  the  architecture  of  his 
sentences,  or  any  other  question  relating  to 
form,  if  we  turn  our  eyes  even  for  a  moment 
from  the  thought  goal  to  which  he  is  driv- 
ing? And  yet  a  well-known  critic  has  said 
that  literature  is  that  kind  of  writing  in 
which  the  form  is  of  more  importance  than 
the  content.  It  would  be  hard  to  pack  more 
vacuity  into  an  equal  number  of  words. 
The  man  who  defined  classical  music  as  the 
music  that  is  better  than  it  sounds  was  a 
kinsman  but  wiser. 

When  Christ  said,  "  Seek  ye  first  the  king- 
dom of  God  and  his  righteousness;  and  all 


THE  KEYNOTE  METHOD  13 

these  things  shall  be  added  unto  you,"  He 
suggested  the  final  solution  of  all  the  vexing 
problems  that  have  gathered  about  the  rela- 
tion of  form  and  content.  The  Master  w^as 
not  attempting  to  appraise  the  relative 
importance  of  "  the  kingdom  of  God  "  and 
"  all  these  things."  He  was  only  telling 
how  "  all  these  things  "  could  be  secured. 
How  ?  By  attending  to  something  else  first. 
The  something  else  in  literature  is  thought 
content;  "all  these  things"  are  the  details 
of  form.  The  question  is  not,  Which  is  the 
more  important?  but  Which  comes  first? 
Priority  not  primacy  is  the  solution.  Put 
first  things  first. 

II 

We  are  going  to  read  and  meditate  to- 
gether eight  masterpieces  of  the  world's 
literature.  They  are  Genesis,  Esther,  Job, 
Hosea,  John,  Romans,  Philippians,  and  Revela- 
tion. We  shall  try  to  strike  the  keynote  of 
each,  to  find  its  taproot,  to  chart  its  central 
current,  to  assimilate  its  pivotal  thought,  or, 
as  Cortez  might  have  put  it,  to  capture  its 
cacique.  The  task  is  difficult  and  I  enter 
upon  it  with  many  misgivings.  Nor  am  I 
sure  that  what  may  prove  to  be  central  in 
my  thinking  will  be  central  in  yours,  or  that 
what  is  central  to  you  will  be  central  to  me. 


14  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

I  am  heartened,  however,  in  making  the  at- 
tempt by  the  conviction  that  the  time  is 
surely  coming  when  all  great  literature  will 
be  studied  in  just  this  way.  A  few  voices 
have  already  been  raised  in  behalf  of  the 
thought  content  of  literature.  "  The  highest 
attribute  of  the  poet,"  says  C.  F.  Johnson," 
"  is  thought  power  in  the  broad  sense,  that 
which  coordinates  multiform  phenomena 
and  refers  them  to  law,"  Rudolph  Eucken* 
expresses  it  still  more  strongly :  "  In  our 
opinion  this  setting  aside  of  content  con- 
stitutes a  danger  for  that  very  independence 
of  art  in  the  interests  of  which  it  is  de- 
manded. To  become  independent  of  mate- 
rial does  not  mean  to  attain  pure  independ- 
ence. An  art  devoted  preponderatingly  to 
form  easily  becomes  a  mere  matter  of  pro- 
fessional dexterity,  the  first  concern  of  which 
is  to  display  (to  itself  if  not  to  others)  its 
own  skill.  This  gives  rise  to  a  predilection 
for  the  eccentric,  paradoxical,  and  exagger- 
ated, and,  in  seeking  after  effects  of  this 
kind,  the  promised  freedom  only  too  easily 
becomes  merely  another  kind  of  dependence, 
a  dependence  of  the  artist  upon  others  and 
upon  his  own  moods.     Genuine  independ- 

'  "  Elements  of  Literary  Criticism." 
* "  Main  Currents  of  Modern  Thought." 


THE  KEYNOTE  METHOD  15 

ence  is  to  be  found  only  when  the  creative 
work  proceeds  solely  from  an  inner  necessity 
of  the  artist's  own  nature.  But  this  cannot 
take  place  unless  there  is  something  to  say, 
nay,  something  to  reveal.  Mere  virtuosity 
knows  no  such  necessity." 

"  So  long  as  poetry  is  conceived  as  mere 
imitation,"  says  Richard  Green  Moulton/ 
"  the  emphasis  is  shifted  from  the  matter  to 
the  manner  of  performance ;  more  and  more 
the  spirit  of  connoisseurship  turns  from 
deeper  things  to  delicate  nuances  of  effect. 
If  poetry  is  creation,  the  subject-matter 
takes  the  center  of  the  field."  A  good  sum- 
mary is  given  by  C.  T.  Winchester  '^  "  We 
have  a  right  to  ask,  then,  of  any  work  of 
literary  art,  however  emotional  in  purpose. 
What  does  it  mean?  What  truths  does  it 
embody  and  enforce?  We  shall  find  there 
is  no  eminence  in  literature  without  some- 
thing high  or  serious  in  its  thought;  and 
that,  other  things  being  equal,  the  value  of 
all  literature  increases  with  the  breadth  and 
depth  of  the  truth  it  contains." 

That  these  views  have  not  always  been 
held  even  by  eminent  critics  is  evidenced  by 
the  following  interesting  extract  from  the 

* "  The  Modern  Study  of  lyiterature." 

' "  Some  Principles  of  Literary  Criticism." 


16  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

Journal  of  Edward  Gibbon.  Under  date  of 
October  3,  1762,  he  writes:  *' I  was  ac- 
quainted only  with  two  ways  of  criticising  a 
beautiful  passage :  the  one,  to  show,  by  an 
exact  anatomy  of  it,  the  distinct  beauties  of 
it,  and  whence  they  sprung;  the  other,  an 
idle  exclamation,  or  a  general  encomium, 
which  leaves  nothing  behind  it.  Longinus 
has  shown  me  that  there  is  a  third.  He  tells 
me  his  own  feelings  upon  reading  it;  and 
tells  them  with  such  energy  that  he  com- 
municates them."  Is  there  not  a  fourth  way 
and  should  it  not  come  first?  Let  us  try 
an  illustration,  beginning  with  Gibbon's 
three  ways  and  taking  as  our  '*  beautiful 
passage  "  Poe's  lines: 

The  glory  that  was  Greece 

And  the  grandeur  that  was  Rome. 

(1)  An  "anatomy"  of  this  passage 
shows  that  its  beauty  is  due  in  part  to  the 
perfect  parallelism  maintained,  "  glory  "  in 
the  first  line  corresponding  to  "  grandeur  " 
in  the  second,  and  *'  Greece  "  in  the  first  to 
"  Rome  "  in  the  second.  The  contrast,  too, 
between  the  accented  vowels,  the  long  o  and 
e  sounds  and  the  short  an  sound,  contributes 
its  quota  of  sonant  beauty.  Further  analy- 
sis reveals  a  distinctive  appeal  in  the  com- 


THE  KEYNOTE  METHOD  17 

plete  identification  of  glory  with  Greece  and 
of  grandeur  with  Rome.  The  poet  had  first 
written 

The  beauty  of  fair  Greece 
And  the  grandeur  of  old  Rome; 

but  he  vastly  increased  the  effectiveness  of 
his  lines  when  he  replaced  ''  beauty  "  with 
"  glory,"  and  ''  of  fair  "  and  "  of  old  "  with 
"  that  was,"  thus  making  glory  the  very 
synonym  of  Greece  and  grandeur  only  an- 
other name  for  Rome. 

(2)  This  has  always  seemed  to  me  one 
of  the  most  beautiful  passages  in  American 
literature.  How  satisfying,  how  haunting, 
how  magical  is  the  phrasing !  ''Two  mighty 
lines,"  says  Edwin  Markham,  "  that  com- 
press into  a  brief  space  all  the  rich,  high 
magnificence  of  dead  centuries."  They  are 
"  reserved  for  immortality,"  says  the  Eng- 
Hsh  critic,  J.  M.  Robertson.  They  bear 
"  the  seal  of  ultimate  perfection,"  writes 
C.  L.  Moore. 

(3)  Whenever  I  read  these  lines,  Greece 
in  all  her  splendor  and  Rome  in  all  her  great- 
ness seem  summoned  back.  I  feel  like  writ- 
ing the  first  line  in  every  Greek  history  that 
I  may  hereafter  read  and  the  second  in  every 
Roman  history.  They  stimulate  my  imagina- 


18  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

tion  by  opening  vast  vistas  of  buried  history 
and  by  pointing  out  the  best  angles  of  vision. 
(4)  But  these  are  mere  bypaths  of  in- 
terpretation, for  Poe  is  not  thinking  pri- 
marily of  Greece  or  of  Rome.  He  is  trying 
to  express  the  effect  upon  himself  of  the 
beauty  of  a  friend  whom  he  calls  Helen. 
Till  he  saw  Helen,  the  story  of  Greece  and 
Rome  had  been  only  a  tale  that  was  told. 
The  incomparable  art  of  the  one  and  the 
lofty  achievement  of  the  other,  a  blend  of 
ideal  beauty  and  of  ordered  power,  had 
alike  passed  him  by.  Now  it  is  different.  A 
new  faculty  has  been  released.  Helen  has 
brought  him  home 

To  the  glory  that  was  Greece 
And  the  grandeur  that  was  Rome, 

When  probed  for  their  central  meaning, 
therefore,  the  lines  make  it  clear  that  the 
goal  of  Poe's  thought  was  not  Greece  or 
Rome.  It  was  the  interpretation  of  Helen's 
beauty  in  terms  of  Greece  and  Rome.  Till 
this  thought  is  made  central  and  controlling, 
all  "  ways  of  criticising  "  will  be  misdirected. 
One  has  only  to  glance  at  some  of  the 
laboriously  introduced  and  minutely  anno- 
tated editions  of  literature  that  flood  the 
markets  to-day  to  see  that  thought  content 


THE  KEY^^OTE  METHOD  19 

has  not  yet  come  into  its  own.  Here  is  a 
select  edition  of  Sidney  Lanier's  poems  with 
introduction,  notes,  and  bibhography.  I 
turn  to  that  great  sonnet,  called  The  Mocking- 
Bird: 

Superb  and  sole,  upon  a  pIumM  spray 
That  o'er  the  general  leafage  boldly  grew, 
He  summ'd  the  woods  in  song ;  or  typic  drew 
The  watch  of  hungry  hawks,  the  lone  dismay 
Of  languid  doves  when  long  their  lovers  stray 
And  all  birds'  passion-plays  that  sprinkle  dew 
At  morn  in  brake  or  bosky  avenue. 
Whate'er  birds  did  or  dreamed,  this  bird  could 

say. 
Then  down  he  shot,  bounced  airily  along 
The  sward,  twitched  in  a  grasshopper,  made 

song 
Midflight,  perched,  prinked,  and  to  his  art 

again. 
Sweet  Science,  this  large  riddle  read  me  plain : 
How  may  the  death  of  that  dull  insect  be 
The  life  of  yon  trim  Shakespeare  on  the  tree  ? 

What  is  the  theme  or  core  of  this  sonnet 
as  a  whole?  Plainly  the  thought  launched 
in  the  last  three  lines.  Lanier  was  thinking 
and  wished  to  make  us  think  of  those  myriad 
alchemies  of  nature  that  transcend  and  defy 
the  chemistries  of  man.  How  is  the  insen- 
sate   clod    transformed   through    fruit    and 


20  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

grain  and  flesh  into  brain  and  thought  and 
joy?  Or,  to  stage  it  differently,  how  is  the 
song  of  the  most  graceful  and  melodious  of 
birds  vitalized  by  the  carcass  of  the  most 
awkward  and  cacophonous  of  insects?  Can 
science  tell?  "  Why  may  not  imagination,'* 
says  Hamlet,  "  trace  the  noble  dust  of  Alex- 
ander till  he  find  it  stopping  a  bung-hole? 
.  .  .  As  thus :  Alexander  died,  Alexander 
was  buried,  Alexander  returneth  into  dust; 
the  dust  is  earth;  of  earth  we  make  loam; 
and  why  of  that  loam,  whereto  he  was  con- 
verted, might  they  not  stop  a  beer-barrel?  " 
They  might,  but  imagination  finds  little 
profit  in  tracing  downward.  It  is  the  up- 
ward tracings  that  lead  us  out  into  the  in- 
finite. But  how  does  our  annotator  make 
clear  the  central  thought  of  The  Mocking- 
Bird?  He  says  nothing  about  it  but  he  re- 
fers us  to  books  and  encyclopedias  on  birds 
in  general,  to  English  poems  about  the  sky- 
lark and  nightingale,  and  to  thirty- two  Amer- 
ican poems  and  prose  selections  about  the 
mocking-bird.  Centrifugal  criticism  could 
hardly  go  further.  Indeed  one  is  surprised 
that  in  the  four  pages  of  notes  no  parallel 
reading  about  the  grasshopper  was  sug- 
gested. 

Let  us  take  a  still  greater  poem,  probably 


THE  KEYNOTE  METHOD  21 

the  greatest  poem  of  equal  length  in  all 
literature.  I  mean  Gray's  Elegy  Written  in  a 
Country  Churchyard,  Longfellow  tells  us  of 
the  children  who,  coming  home  from  school, 
used  to  look  in  at  the  open  door  of  the  black- 
smith's shop 

And  catch  the  burning  sparks  that  fly 
Like  chaff  from  a  threshing  floor. 

They  of  course  cared  nothing  for  the  shape 
that  was  being  forged :  they  were  interested 
only  in  the  sparks.  Does  not  Gray's  Blegy 
survive  to-day  chiefly  in  sparks,  in  frag- 
mentary quotations  ?  Here  again  the  parallel 
reading  assigned  in  annotated  editions  is  not 
really  parallel.  It  is  essentially  unrelated. 
Parallel  reading,  if  it  means  anything,  means 
reading  that  follows  the  same  trajectory  of 
thought.  It  means  reading  that  illuminates 
and  is  illuminated  by  the  masterpiece  with 
which  we  start.  Does  Milton's  Lycidas  or 
ShtW^y's  A donais  or  Tennyson's  In  Mcinoriam, 
great  as  they  are,  treat  the  theme  treated 
by  Gray?  I  think  not.  The  fact  that  all 
are  elegies  is  negligible.  It  was  this  con- 
fusion of  title  and  theme,  of  name  and  sub- 
stance, that  led  the  annotator  of  The  Mock- 
ing-Bird  to  class  the  poem  as  a  study  in 
ornithology.     Of  course  a  reading  of  other 


22  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

great  elegies  will  serve  to  bring  out  the  con- 
trast between  them  and  Gray's  work.  But 
so  will  the  reading  of  poems  that  are  not 
elegies.  Parallel  reading,  if  it  is  not  to  be 
sapless  and  unprocreant,  if  it  is  to  do  more 
than  merely  satisfy  a  routine  academic  re- 
quirement, must  be  suggested  rather  than 
imposed,  and  suggested  by  the  nature  of  the 
thought  that  we  are  trying  to  assimilate. 

What  now  is  Gray's  central  plea  in  his 
greatest  poem?  Notice  that  he  did  not  call 
his  lines  merely  an  elegy  but  an  Elegy  Written 
in  a  Country  'Churchyard.  No  poet,  certainly 
not  one  of  Gray's  fastidiousness,  would  have 
given  his  lines  so  long  and  detailed  a  title 
without  having  in  mind  a  definite  purpose. 
No  other  elegy  tells  in  its  title  where  it  was 
written.  But  in  this  elegy  the  place  was 
essential,  for  this  elegy  dares  to  pit  the 
neglected  churchyard  against  Westminster 
Abbey.  It  is  the  most  democratic  poem  in 
the  English  language.  Its  plea  is  not  for  the 
living  few  who  have  not  a  fair  chance  but  for 
the  unnumbered  dead  of  all  times  and  climes 
who  did  not  have  a  fair  chance.  These  lines 
strike  the  keynote: 

Perhaps  in  this  neglected  spot  is  laid 

Some  heart  once  pregnant  with  celestial 
fire: 


THE  KEYNOTE  METHOD  23 

Hands  that  the  rod  of  empire  might  have 
swayed, 
Or  wak'd  to  ecstasy  the  living  lyre. 

But  Knowledge  to  their  eyes  her  ample  page, 
Rich  with  the  spoils  of  time,  did  ne'er 
unroll ; 

Chill  Penury  repressed  their  noble  rage, 
And  froze  the  genial  current  of  their  soul. 

Other  elegies  are  individual;  this  is  uni- 
versal. Gray  is  championing  the  cause  of 
the  potentially  great  against  the  actually 
great.  The  difference,  he  says,  is  not  in 
native  worth  but  in  relative  opportunity  for 
self-development,  not  in  breed  but  in  pas- 
ture. Those  v^ho  lie  in  Westminster  Abbey 
belonged  to  the  privileged  class.  Given 
equal  opportunity  those  who  lie  beneath  the 
unlettered  texts  of  Stoke  Pogis  or  of  any 
other  neglected  churchyard  might  have  been 
sepulchred  with  equal  acclaim  and  beneath 
an  equal  glory  of  bronze  and  marble.  In- 
stead of  parallel  reading,  go  out  and  stand 
in  such  a  cemetery  as  Gray  describes  and 
think  the  poet's  thoughts  after  him.  It  will 
temper  your  estimate  of  class  distinctions; 
it  will  widen  and  deepen  your  sympathies; 
it  may  even  dedicate  you  to  the  task  of  help- 
ing potential   greatness   to   become   actual 


24  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

greatness.  Such  a  poem  sends  a  challenge  to 
every  school  and  church  and  government  in 
the  world.  If  parallel  reading  be  insisted 
on,  let  it  not  be  other  elegies.  Let  it  rather 
be  such  trumpet  calls  as  Burns  sounded  in  A 
Man's  a  Man  for  a'  That  or  Jefferson  in  The 
Declaration  of  Independence  or  Gray  himself  in 
The  Alliance  of  Education  and  Government, 

III 

That  the  Bible  surpasses  in  the  value  and 
potency  of  its  thought  content  all  other 
literature  does  not  need  to  be  reaffirmed.  I 
yield  to  no  one  in  my  admiration  of  the 
classical  literatures  or  of  the  modern  litera- 
tures or  of  the  more  technical  literature  of 
scientific  achievement.  But  in  vividness  and 
intensity,  in  elevation  of  appeal,  in  the  ex- 
tent of  her  literary  empire,  and  in  the  dura- 
tion of  her  sovereignty,  the  Bible  takes  easy 
and  secure  precedence.  The  most  advanced 
nations  of  the  v^orld  are  the  children  of  her 
fireside;  the  centuries  themselves  have  been 
but  handmaidens  in  her  service.  There  is 
no  modern  literature  vi^orthy  the  name  that 
has  not  felt  her  influence.  There  is  no 
regnant  people  whose  strivings  she  has  not 
shepherded. 

But  the  individual  books  of  the  Bible  are 


THE  KEYNOTE  METHOD  25 

not  so  well  known  as  wholes  as  are  other 
masterpieces  of  far  less  significance.  Ask 
the  average  reader  or  student  to  give  you 
the  central  content  of  Hamlefy  Evangeline, 
Pippa  Passes,  Silas  Marner,  Peer  Gynt,  Mr, 
Britling  Sees  It  Through,  and,  if  he  has  read 
them,  you  will  get  better  answers  than  if 
you  ask  him  about  the  distinctive  content  of 
Ezra,  Isaiah,  Joel,  Haggai,  Colossians,  Jude, 
The  reasons  for  this  difference  seem  to  me 
many.  In  the  first  place,  our  sense  of  the 
unique  unity  and  authoritativeness  of  the 
Bible  as  a  whole  has  dwarfed  our  feeling  for 
the  distinctive  content  of  the  sixty-six  book 
units.  We  forget  that  the  men  who  wrote 
or  compiled  these  books  did  so  not  because 
they  had  to  say  something  but  because  they 
had  something  to  say.  We  think  of  the 
Bible  and  read  it  not  as  a  library  but  as  a 
book,  though  in  derivation  and  in  essential 
content  it  is  a  collection  of  books  rather  than 
one  book.  To  search  the  Bible  for  favorite 
verses,  to  Hsten  Sunday  after  Sunday  to  the 
exposition  of  select  texts,  to  follow  the  Sun- 
day School  method  of  long  jumps  and  short 
pauses  will  undoubtedly  store  the  mind  with 
vital  truth.  But  this  is  not  enough,  and  the 
writers  of  the  Bible  would  be  the  first  to 
protest.     Every  method  of  Bible  study  is  in 


26  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

its  very  nature  inadequate  if  it  ignores  the 
larger  and  creative  or  superintending  pur- 
pose that  gave  beginning  and  ending  and 
distinctive  message  to  each  book. 

Even  when  the  Bible  is  read  through  once 
a  year  or  at  shorter  intervals,  it  is  not  read 
w^ith  anything  like  the  attention  to  its  con- 
stituent parts  that  we  give  to  a  like  reading 
of  Shakespeare  or  Emerson  or  Ibsen.  Have 
you  ever  in  reading  the  Bible  paused  after 
each  book  and  asked  yourself:  What  does 
this  book  say  that  no  other  book  of  the 
sixty-six  says  or  says  so  well?  If  this  book 
had  not  been  written,  how  and  where  would 
the  BibHcal  structure  be  weakened?  If  this 
were  the  only  book  of  the  Bible  left  to  us, 
how  much  of  the  rest  could  we  reconstruct? 
If  nothing  else  were  known  about  the  author 
except  that  he  wrote  this  book,  how  much 
of  his  personality  could  we  gather  from  it? 

But  our  familiarity  or  unfamiliarity  with 
the  Bible  is  not  due  chiefly  to  methods  of 
reading  it  through.  It  comes  to  us,  as  has 
been  already  said,  by  ways  far  more  hostile 
to  thought  content.  The  story  is  told  of  a 
Scotch  minister  who  used  to  take  snuff  so 
habitually  that  he  ignored  the  proprieties  of 
both  time  and  place.  "  My  text  this  morn- 
ing," he  once  announced,  "you  will  find  in 


THE  KEYNOTE  METHOD  27 

these  words :  '  Here  a  little  and  there  a 
little/  "  each  little  being  illustrated  by  a 
corresponding  pinch  and  inhalation.  We 
illustrate  the  text  differently  but  none  the 
less  habitually.  The  current  method  of 
Bible  study,  if  it  may  be  called  such,  is  a 
hop-skip-and-jump  method.  No  other  book, 
except  a  dictionary,  a  cook  book,  or  a  volume 
of  popular  quotations,  is  used  in  the  same 
way. 

The  popular  attitude  toward  the  book  of 
Jonah  will  illustrate.  You  will  not  find  in  all 
literature  another  so  flagrant  example  of  the 
havoc  wrought  by  nibbhng,  halting,  piece- 
meal interpretation.  If  Jonah  had  not  been 
one  of  the  books  of  the  Bible,  its  central 
content  may  very  well  have  been  differently 
interpreted  by  different  readers,  just  as 
Hauptmann^s  Sunken  Bell  or  Maeterlinck's 
Blue  Bird  is  differently  interpreted  by  dif- 
ferent readers;  but  the  interpretation  would 
at  least  have  been  an  honest  attempt  to  ap- 
praise the  message  of  the  work  as  a  whole. 
As  it  is,  one  incident  has  been  wrested  from 
its  setting  and  made  to  connote  the  meaning 
and  mission  of  the  entire  book.  There  are 
times  when  the  book  of  Jonah  seems  to  me 
the  most  uplifting  book  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment.    It  is  an  epitome  of  history,  world 


28  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

history  and  individual  history.  It  is  the  age- 
long conflict  between  the  liberal  God  and 
illiberal  man.  Nowhere  else  in  the  Old 
Testament  does  God  appear  more  godlike 
or  human  nature  more  human.  In  no  other 
book  is  the  writer's  purpose  clearer  or  more 
modernly  helpful.  No  other  book  is  in  more 
exact  accord  with  our  highest  imaginings  of 
God  or  with  our  sifted  and  ultimate  knowl- 
edge of  man.  But  the  popular  interpreta- 
tion stops  abruptly  with  the  appearance  of 
the  "  great  fish."  If  parallel  reading  were 
to  be  popularly  assigned  it  would  be  a  course 
in  ichthyology.  There  would  be  nothing 
spiritual  in  it.  And  this  attitude  is  due 
chiefly  to  the  current  discontinuity  and  lack 
of  totality  with  which  the  Bible  is  read  and 
interpreted.  I  can  find  no  analogy  outside 
of  the  Bible  to  this  particular  kind  of  mis- 
interpretation. 

Another  influence  at  work  is  not  popular 
but  scholarly.  It  is  the  so-called  higher 
criticism.  This  criticism  is  to-day  still  in 
the  fragmentary  stage.  It  is  making  bricks 
rather  than  building  temples.  The  thrill  of 
supposed  discovery  induces  in  the  higher 
critic  an  over-valuation  of  the  part  as  against 
the  balanced  appraisal  of  the  whole.  Higher 
criticism  has  achieved  much  and  will,  I  hope, 


THE  KEYNOTE  METHOD  29 

achieve  more.  But  at  present  it  is  stronger 
in  rnimitiae  than  in  wholes,  in  finding  than  in 
correlating,  in  the  hurrah  of  exploitation 
than  in  the  hush  of  interpretation.  Some- 
times it  is  a  word  that  derails  the  critical 
judgment,  sometimes  an  incident.  Take  the 
word  "  holy."  It  is,  as  you  know,  one  of 
the  distinctions  of  Isaiah  that  he  is  pre- 
eminently "  the  prophet  of  holiness."  One 
does  not  have  to  be  a  Hebrew  scholar  to 
know  what  Isaiah  means  by  "  holy."  Its 
orbit,  like  the  orbit  of  other  words,  can  be 
traced  accurately  in  its  use.  It  bears  its 
credentials  with  it.  Read  Isaiah  through 
from  beginning  to  end  and  you  will  have  a 
far  better  idea  of  what  he  means  by  "  holy  " 
than  will  the  philologist  who  knows  the 
original  meaning  of  the  word  but  who  is 
wedded  to  the  conviction  that  words  never 
throw  off  the  halo  or  halter  of  their  first 
meanings. 

The  following  paragraph  is  an  illustra- 
tion:' "When  we  learn  that  the  root-word 
for  *  holy '  is  the  sam.e  throughout  the 
Semitic  group  of  languages,  and  that  in 
Assyrian,  for  example,  it  is  used  in  one  form 
to  designate  a  *  prostitute '  or  *  harlot,'  we 

7.  M.  Powis  Smith  in  "A  Guide  to  the  Study  of  the 
Christian  Religion  "  (1916),  p.  140. 


30  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

get  a  new  point  of  view  for  the  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Hebrew  word."  I  think  not.  The 
word  "  holy  "  in  Hebrew,  like  "  sacer  "  in 
Latin  and  "  hagios  "  in  Greek  and  "  taboo  " 
in  Polynesian,  meant  originally  "  set  apart 
for  a  definite  purpose."  The  purpose  might 
be  good  or  bad.  The  word  was  ritualistic 
rather  than  ethical.  But  in  Hebrew  the 
ethical  meaning  soon  dwarfed  the  ritualistic 
and  in  Isaiah's  use  "  holy  "  plainly  includes 
the  whole  circuit  of  moral  and  spiritual  per- 
fection. The  knowledge  of  the  original  or 
etymological  meaning  of  Hebrew  ''  holy  " 
does  not  give  us  "  a  new  point  of  view  for 
the  interpretation  of  the  Hebrew  word." 
It  is  only  another  illustration  of  the  well 
known  principle  of  semantics  that  the  first 
meaning  of  a  word,  while  often  interesting 
and  even  prophetic,  will  prove  a  barrier  to 
interpretation  if  you  carry  it  over  into  later 
meanings.  The  first  meaning  is  a  spring- 
board, not  a  harness. 

Our  word  "  devout  "  has  followed  the  well 
beaten  highway  of  Hebrew  "  holy."  It 
meant  originally  "  set  apart,  devoted  or 
vowed  to,"  and  the  person  or  thing  could  be 
vowed  to  Satan  as  well  as  to  God.  In  fact 
Sheldon  *  speaks  of  those  who  were  not  the 

'"  Miracles  of  Antichrist"  (1616). 


THE  KEYNOTE  METHOD  31 

ordinary  followers  of  Antichrist  "  but  his 
special  devouts."  Suppose  now  that  in  an 
obituary  of  some  dear  friend  of  yours  the 
writer  had  frequently  used  the  word  "  de- 
vout." What  would  you  think  of  the  man 
who  should  whisper  in  your  ear — "  You  will 
get  a  new  point  of  view  for  the  interpreta- 
tion of  this  word  *  devout  *  if  you  will  re- 
member that  originally  it  could  be  applied 
to  devotees  of  the  devil  "  ? 

But  the  higher  criticism,  in  its  search  for 
proof-texts,  misinterprets  an  incident  as 
often  as  a  mere  word.  The  reason  is  the 
same  in  both  cases :  the  part  is  exalted  above 
the  whole.  And  the  remedy  is  the  same: 
read  the  entire  book  and  interpret  the  part 
in  the  light  of  the  whole,  not  the  whole  in 
the  light  of  the  part.  Difficulties  of  inter- 
pretation, if  soluble  at  all,  will  be  found 
soluble  in  the  waters  of  the  central  current 
rather  than  in  the  brackish  pools  along  the 
shore.  A  recent  critic,'  for  example,  at- 
tempts to  prove  that  in  the  older  Old  Testa- 
ment books  "  Jahveh  is  the  God  of  Palestine 
only,  being  more  or  less  localized  at  Sanctu- 
aries within  its  borders."  His  power,  in 
other  words,  was  not  supposed  to  extend  be- 

*See  "The  Old  Testament  in  the  Ligrht  of  To- 
day," by  William  Frederic  Bad^,  chapter  III. 


32  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

yond  the  limits  of  the  Holy  Land.  "  The 
fact,"  he  adds,  ''  that  Jahveh  and  his  wor- 
ship were  popularly  believed  to  be  insepa- 
rable irom  Palestine  may  be  illustrated  by  a 
number  of  interesting  passages." 

The  incidents  cited  are  three.  In  the  first, 
Cain  is  speaking: ''  Behold,  thou  hast  driven 
me  out  this  day  from  the  face  of  the  ground ; 
and  from  thy  face  shall  I  be  hid ;  and  I  shall 
be  a  fugitive  and  a  wanderer  in  the  earth; 
and  it  will  come  to  pass,  that  whosoever 
findeth  me  will  slay  me  "  {Genesis  4 :  14).  In 
the  second  passage  the  Philistines  are  the 
speakers:  "And  see;  if  it  [the  ark  of  the 
Lord]  goeth  up  by  the  way  of  its  own  bor- 
der to  Bethshemesh,  then  he  hath  done  us 
this  great  evil:  but  if  not,  then  we  shall 
know  that  it  is  not  his  hand  that  smote 
us;  it  was  a  chance  that  happened  to  us" 
(1  Samuel  6:9).  In  the  third  passage  David 
speaks  to  Saul :  "  They  have  driven  me  out 
this  day  that  I  should  not  cleave  unto  the 
inheritance  of  Jehovah,  saying.  Go,  serve 
other  gods.  Now  therefore,  let  not  my 
blood  fall  to  the  earth  away  from  the  pres- 
ence of  Jehovah  "  (1  Samuel  26 :  19-20). 

It  does  not  seem  to  me  that  these  inci- 
dents, though  torn  from  their  setting,  prove 
or  even  make  plausible  the  author's  conten- 


THE  KEYNOTE  METHOD  33 

tion.  They  illustrate  not  the  Tightness  of 
his  view  but  the  wrongness  of  his  method. 
They  but  emphasize  the  need  of  standardiz- 
ing our  interpretation  of  particular  incidents 
by  weighing  them  in  the  scales  of  the  book 
units  as  wholes.  A  reading  of  Genesis  entire 
and  of  1  Samuel  entire  will  not  only  make 
the  meaning  of  these  incidents  plain  but  will, 
in  our  judgment,  establish  the  exact  reverse 
of  what  the  author  seeks  to  prove.  Synec- 
doche, or  the  use  of  a  part  for  the  whole,  is 
a  figure  of  speech  that  belongs  to  rhetoric, 
not  to  logic,  certainly  not  to  hermeneutics. 

IV 
Photographers  tell  us  that  the  airplane 
will  soon  inaugurate  a  new  kind  of  photog- 
raphy. The  bird's-eye  view,  the  view  of  the 
lower  from  the  realm  of  the  higher,  has 
hitherto  been  the  privilege  of  the  bird  alone. 
It  will  soon  be  man's  privilege.  We  shall 
see  more  because  we  shall  see  less.  No  book 
offers  so  much  to  the  view  from  the  heights 
as  does  the  Bible ;  no  writers  have  suffered 
more  from  the  partial  view  than  the  writers 
of  the  books  of  the  Bible;  and  no  time  has 
called  more  loudly  for  the  release  of  the 
larger  view  than  the  time  in  which  we  live. 


II 

GENESIS 

I 

NO  single  chapter  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment so  impresses  me  with  its 
inherent  greatness  as  the  first 
chapter  of  Genesis.  Some  of  the  Psalms  and 
a  few  chapters  in  Isaiah  strike  a  note  of 
higher  rhapsody.  In  sheer  intellectuahty 
the  twentieth  chapter  of  Bxodus  goes  beyond 
it.  But  in  its  blend  of  beauty  and  power,  in 
the  recurrent  beat  of  its  planetary  rhythms, 
in  the  consciousness  of  a  great  truth  ade- 
quately embodied  at  last,  in  a  certain  proud 
disdain  of  all  embellishment  except  that 
which  attends  unsolicited  upon  great 
thought  greatly  expressed,  the  first  chapter 
of  Genesis  seems  to  me  alone  and  unap- 
proached. 

In  the  beginning  God  created  the  heaven 
and  the  earth.  And  the  earth  was  without 
form,  and  void;  and  darkness  was  upon  the 
face  of  the  deep.  And  the  Spirit  of  God 
moved  upon  the  face  of  the  waters.  And 
God  said,  Let  there  be  light:  and  there  was 
34 


GENESIS  36 

light.  And  God  saw  the  light,  that  it  was 
good:  and  God  divided  the  light  from  the 
darkness.  And  God  called  the  light  Day, 
and  the  darkness  he  called  Night.  And  the 
evening  and  the  morning  were  the  first  day. 

And  God  said,  Let  there  be  a  firmament  in 
the  midst  of  the  waters,  and  let  it  divide  the 
waters  from  the  waters.  And  God  made  the 
firmament  and  divided  the  waters  which  were 
under  the  firmament  from  the  waters  which 
were  above  the  firmament:  and  it  was  so. 
And  God  called  the  firmament  Heaven. 
And  the  evening  and  the  morning  were  the 
second  day. 

And  God  said,  Let  the  waters  under  the 
heaven  be  gathered  together  unto  one  place, 
and  let  the  dry  land  appear:  and  it  was  so. 
And  God  called  the  dry  land  Earth ;  and  the 
gathering  together  of  the  waters  called  he 
Seas:  and  God  saw  that  it  was  good.  And 
God  said,  Let  the  earth  bring  forth  grass,  the 
herb  yielding  seed,  and  the  fruit  tree  yield- 
ing fruit  after  his  kind,  whose  seed  is  in 
itself,  upon  the  earth :  and  it  was  so.  And 
the  earth  brought  forth  grass,  and  herb  yield- 
ing seed  after  his  kind,  and  the  tree  yield- 
ing fruit,  whose  seed  was  in  itself,  after  his 
kind:  and  God  saw  that  it  was  good.  And 
the  evening  and  the  morning  were  the  third 
day. 

And  God  said.  Let  there  be  lights  in  the 


36  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

firmament  of  the  heaven  to  divide  the  'day 
from  the  night;  and  let  them  be  for  signs, 
and  for  seasons,  and  for  days,  and  years: 
And  let  them  be  for  lights  in  the  firmament 
of  the  heaven  to  give  light  upon  the  earth: 
and  it  vi^as  so.  And  God  made  two  great 
lights ;  the  greater  light  to  rule  the  day,  and 
the  lesser  light  to  rule  the  night :  he  made  the 
stars  also.  And  God  set  them  in  the  firma- 
ment of  the  heaven  to  give  light  upon  the 
earth,  and  to  rule  over  the  day  and  over  the 
night,  and  to  divide  the  light  from  the  dark- 
ness: and  God  saw  that  it  was  good.  And 
the  evening  and  the  morning  were  the  fourth 
day. 

And  God  said.  Let  the  waters  bring  forth 
abundantly  the  moving  creature  that  hath 
life,  and  fowl  that  may  fly  above  the  earth 
in  the  open  firmament  of  heaven.  And  God 
created  great  whales,  and  every  living  crea- 
ture that  moveth,  which  the  waters  brought 
forth  abundantly,  after  their  kind,  and  every 
vdnged  fowl  after  his  kind:  and  God  saw 
that  it  was  good.  And  God  blessed  them, 
saying.  Be  fruitful,  and  multiply,  and  fill  the 
waters  in  the  seas,  and  let  fowl  multiply  in 
the  earth.  And  the  evening  and  the  morning 
were  the  fifth  day. 

And  God  said,  Let  the  earth  bring  forth 
the  living  creature  after  his  kind,  cattle,  and 
creeping  thing,  and  beast  of  the  earth  after 


GENESIS  37 

his  kind :  and  it  was  so.  And  God  made  the 
beast  of  the  earth  after  his  kind,  and  cattle 
after  their  kind,  and  every  thing  that  creep- 
eth  upon  the  earth  after  his  kind:  and  God 
saw  that  it  was  good.  And  God  said.  Let  us 
make  man  in  our  image,  after  our  Hkeness : 
and  let  them  have  dominion  over  the  fish  of 
the  sea,  and  over  the  fowl  of  the  air,  and  over 
the  cattle,  and  over  all  the  earth,  and  over 
every  creeping  thing  that  creepeth  upon  the 
earth.  So  God  created  man  in  his  own  image, 
in  the  image  of  God  created  he  him;  male 
and  female  created  he  them.  And  God 
blessed  them,  and  God  said  unto  them,  Be 
fruitful,  and  multiply,  and  replenish  the 
earth,  and  subdue  it :  and  have  dominion  over 
the  fish  of  the  sea,  and  over  the  fowl  of  the 
air,  and  over  every  living  thing  that  moveth 
upon  the  earth.  And  God  said.  Behold,  I 
have  given  you  every  herb  bearing  seed, 
which  is  upon  the  face  of  all  the  earth,  and 
every  tree,  in  the  which  is  the  fruit  of  a  tree 
yielding  seed;  to  you  it  shall  be  for  meat. 
And  to  every  beast  of  the  earth,  and  to  every 
fowl  of  the  air,  and  to  every  thing  that 
creepeth  upon  the  earth,  wherein  there  is 
life,  I  have  given  every  green  herb  for  meat : 
and  it  was  so.  And  God  saw  every  thing 
that  he  had  made,  and,  behold,  it  was  very 
good.  And  the  evening  and  the  morning 
were  the  sixth  day. 


38  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

This  chapter  abolished  mythology 
throughout  the  civilized  world.  There  were 
doubtless  mythological  germs  among  the 
Hebrews  themselves  but  this  chapter  steril- 
ized them.  Latin,  Greek,  Norse,  and  Ori- 
ental mythology  lived  on  for  a  while  but  the 
warrant  of  dispossession  had  been  served 
and  gods  and  goddesses,  demigods  and  demi- 
goddesses,  naiads,  dryads,  and  hamadryads, 
all  had  to  go.  Some  of  them  found  refuge 
in  poetry  and  romance;  some  in  the  orna- 
ment and  compliment  of  oratory;  some  in 
the  metaphors  and  similes  of  rhetoric.  But 
in  exact  proportion  as  the  first  great  thought 
of  the  Bible  had  free  circulation  among  races 
and  nations,  the  big  gods  and  the  little  gods 
were  doomed.  Mythology  became  a  mere 
toy  of  the  mind.  The  preface  to  the  Bible 
had  throned  one  God  as  maker  and  pre- 
server of  all.  It  served  as  a  sort  of  cosmic 
Monroe  Doctrine,  announcing  to  the  old 
deities  that  any  attempt  on  their  part  to 
extend  their  system  to  any  portion  of  the 
universe  would  henceforth  be  considered 
dangerous  to  the  well-being  of  mankind.  It 
had  its  effect.  The  dignity  and  authorita- 
tiveness  of  the  announcement,  the  splendor 
of  the  vision  that  it  unfolded,  and  the  instant 
appeal  made  to  what  we  now  call  intuitional 


GENESIS  39 

probability   marked   the   inauguration   of  a 
new  era  in  human  thought. 

There  is  in  fact  nothing  finer  in  the  Old 
Testament  than  the  way  in  which  the  author 
of  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  takes  the  ele- 
mental timbers  of  the  world  and  cleans  them 
of  all  the  incrustations  that  had  gathered 
upon  them.    Earth,  water,  night,  sun,  moon, 
stars, — read   what   Greek   and    Roman   in- 
tellects had   done  with  these,  how  buried 
they  were  beneath  the  sediment  of  bizarre 
fancy  and  grotesque  history.     There  is  not 
a  verse  of  this  chapter  that  does  not  by  its 
mere  omissions  register  an  altitude  of  spirit 
immeasurably  beyond  all  that  had  gone  be- 
fore.    Matthew  Arnold  has  drawn  an  elabo- 
rate distinction  between  the  Hebrew  genius 
or    Hebraism    and    the    Greek    genius    or 
Hellenism.      "  The    uppermost    idea    with 
Hellenism,"  he  says,*  "is  to  see  things  as 
they  really  are;  the  uppermost  idea  with 
Hebraism  is  conduct  and  obedience."     The 
distinction  has  enough  truth  to  float  it  but 
it  does  not  fit  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis. 

Read  the  great  chapter  once  more  and 
weigh  its  findings  against  this  summary  of 
classical  mythology  by  John  Fiske:'  "To 

* "  Culture  and  Anarchy,"  chapter  IV. 
*"  Myths  and  Myth-Makers,"  p.  18. 


40  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

the  ancients,  the  moon  was  not  a  lifeless 
body  of  stones  and  clods;  it  was  the  horned 
huntress  Artemis,  coursing  through  the 
upper  ether,  or  bathing  herself  in  the  clear 
lake;  or  it  was  Aphrodite,  protectress  of 
lovers,  born  of  the  sea-foam  in  the  East, 
near  Cyprus.  The  clouds  were  not  bodies 
of  vaporized  water;  they  were  cows,  with 
swelling  udders,  driven  to  the  milking  by 
Hermes,  the  summer  wind;  or  great  sheep 
with  moist  fleeces,  slain  by  the  unerring 
arrows  of  Bellerophon,  the  sun;  or  swan- 
maidens,  flitting  across  the  firmament; 
Valkyries  hovering  over  the  battle-field,  to 
receive  the  souls  of  falling  heroes ;  or,  again, 
they  were  mighty  mountains,  piled  one 
above  another,  in  whose  cavernous  recesses 
the  divining-wand  of  the  storm-god  Thor 
revealed  hidden  treasures.  The  yellow- 
haired  sun  Phoebus  drove  westerly  all  day 
in  his  flaming  chariot;  or,  perhaps,  as 
Meleager,  retired  for  a  while  in  disgust  from 
the  sight  of  men;  wedded  at  eventide  the 
violet  light  (GEnone,  lole)  which  he  had 
forsaken  in  the  morning;  sank  as  Hercules 
upon  a  blazing  funeral-pyre,  or,  like  Aga- 
memnon, perished  in  a  blood-stained  bath; 
or,  as  the  fish-god,  Dagon,  swam  nightly 
through  the  subterranean  waters  to  appear 


GENESIS  41 

eastward  again  at  daybreak.  Sometimes 
Phaethon,  his  rash,  inexperienced  son,  would 
take  the  reins  and  drive  the  solar  chariot 
too  near  the  earth,  causing  the  fruits  to 
perish,  and  the  grass  to  wither,  and  the  wells 
to  dry  up." 

Is  not  the  passion  for  seeing  things  as 
they  really  are  more  deeply  wrought  into 
the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  than  into  the 
Greek  conception?  There  is  no  doubt  that 
conduct  and  obedience  were  central  and  con- 
trolling in  Hebrew  thought  but  they  were 
not  isolated  from  things  as  they  are.  They 
were  built  on  them;  they  were  supported 
and  vitalized  by  them;  they  were  a  part  of 
a  natural  and  necessary  interdependence 
that  the  Hebrew  felt  far  more  vividly  than 
the  Greek.  When  Boeckh,  perhaps  the 
greatest  of  Hellenists,  came  to  sum  up  the 
defects  of  the  Greek  genius,  he  used  this 
language:  "  While  the  Greeks  saw  each  par- 
ticular thing  in  its  concrete  shape,  and  in 
all  their  work  strove  for  supreme  excellence, 
the  vision  of  all  things  in  a  universal  inter- 
dependence was  denied  them."  But  the 
central  achievement  of  the  first  chapter  of 
Genesis  is  just  this  "  vision  of  all  things  in  a 
universal  interdependence." 

The  poets  have  sometimes  attributed  the 


42  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

passing  of  mythology  to  the  revelations  of 
science.     In  his  Sonnet  to  Science,  Poe  asks : 

Hast  thou  not  dragged  Diana  from  her  car  ? 
And  driven  the  Hamadryad  from  the  wood 
To  seek  a  shelter  in  some  happier  star  ? 
Hast  thou  not  torn  the  Naiad  from  her  flood, 
The  Elfin  from  the  green  grass,  and  from  me 
The  summer  dream  beneath  the  tamarind  tree  ? 

It  W2is  not  modern  science,  however,  that 
sent  mythology  to  the  discard.  It  v^as  the 
first  chapter  of  Genesis.  Mythology  did  not 
live  long  enough  to  give  modern  science  a 
chance  to  get  at  it.  And  the  death  of  myth- 
ology, so  far  from  injuring  nature  poetry, 
helped  it.  These  countless  myths  of  crea- 
tion not  only  kept  men  from  a  knowledge  of 
nature  but  made  a  genuine  love  of  nature 
impossible.  They  substituted  for  the  laws 
and  charms  of  nature  the  capricious  doings 
of  gods  and  goddesses.  Lanier  *  sums  up  ad- 
mirably the  real  reason  why  mythology 
checked  and  postponed  the  spread  of  nature 
poetry : 

Much  time  is  run,  and  man  hath  changed  his 

ways. 
Since  Nature,  in  the  antique  fable-days. 
Was  hid  from  man's  true  love  by  proxy  fays, 

'"The  Symphony." 


GENESIS  43 

False  fauns  and  rascal  gods  that  stole  her 

praise. 
The  nymphs,  cold  creatures  of  man's  colder 

brain, 
Chilled  Nature's  streams  till  man's  warm 

heart  was  fain 
Never  to  lave  its  love  in  them  again/ 

But  the  greatest  achievement  of  the  first 
chapter  of  Genesis  is  that  it  announced  unity, 
order,  and  progression  in  nature.  Compare 
this  chapter  with  any  preceding  account  of 
the  creation  of  the  world  and  it  will  be  found 
unique  not  only  in  dispossessing  gods  and 
goddesses  of  their  former  holdings  but  in 
staging  the  hitherto  unrecognized  qualities 
of  unity,  order,  and  progression.  The  claim 
is  sometimes  made  that  other  and  older  ac- 
counts of  creation  have  been  exhumed  that 
anticipate  many  of  the  details  of  the  Hebrew 
record.  If  this  were  true  it  would  not  in- 
validate our  thesis,  for  the  Hebrew  account 
antiquated  at  one  stroke  all  preceding  ac- 
counts and  became  alone  the  torch-bearer  of 
the  new  view.  But  the  claim  made  for  other 
accounts  is  not  true.     Of  course  many  of 

^Compare  also  Chateaubriand's  fine  saying  in 
"  Le  Genie  du  Christianisme  ":  "Libres  de  ce  trou- 
peau  de  dieux  ridicules  qui  les  bornaient  de  toutes 
parts,  les  bois  se  sont  remplis  d'une  divinite  im- 
mense." 


U  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

the  created  things  mentioned  in  Genesis  may 
be  found  in  other  accounts,  but  there  is  no 
unity,  no  order,  no  progression. 

Take  the  famous  Hymn  to  Creation  from 
The  Veda,^     It  ends : 

How  and  from  what  has  sprung  this  Uni- 
verse?   The  gods 

Themselves  are  subsequent  to  its  development. 

Who,  then,  can  penetrate  the  secret  of  its 
rise? 

Whether  'twas  framed  or  not,  made  or  not  • 
made,  he  only 

Who  in  the  highest  sits,  the  omniscient  Lord, 

Assuredly  knows  all,  or  haply  knows  he  not. 

This  is  no  account  of  creation.  It  is  only  a 
dignified  way  of  saying,  *'  I  know  nothing 
about  it  and  doubt  if  God  Himself  knows." 
Compare  The  Sumero-Babylonian  Account  of 
the  Creation  of  the  World  by  Mardnk.^  The 
order  (or  disorder)  of  creation  in  this  inter- 
esting fragment  is  (1)  lands  and  cities, 
(2)  spirits  of  the  earth,  (3)  mankind,  (4)  ani- 
mals and  the  great  rivers,  (5)  vegetation  and 
more  animals,  (6)  beginnings  of  city  civiliza- 
tion.    Whether  written  before  or  after  Gene- 

'  See  "  Old  Sanskrit  Texts,"  by  J.  Muir,  p.  22. 
^  See  "  Beginnings  of  Hebrew  History,"  Appendix 
HI,  by  Charles  Foster  Kent. 


GENESIS  45 

sis  the  Sumero-Babylonian  narrative  can 
serve  only  as  a  foil  to  the  Hebrew  account. 
The  other  Babylonian  accounts  tell  of  the 
long  war  between  Marduk  and  Tiamat  or 
between  Bel  and  Thamte.  There  are  big 
gods,  little  gods,  middle-sized  gods,  mon- 
sters, vipers,  dragons,  raging  hounds,  scor- 
pion men,  fish  men,  everything  but  unity  and 
system.  There  are  contrasts,  startUng  con- 
trasts, to  Genesis  in  these  fantastic  accounts 
but,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word,  no 
parallels.  When  we  remember  that  the 
Babylonian  civilization  was  the  elder,  that  it 
environed  the  Hebrews  from  the  very  be- 
ginning of  their  national  career,  and  that  it 
soon  became  a  part  of  the  cult  of  the  Pheni- 
cians  and  Canaanites,  we  begin  to  realize 
what  an  epoch  in  religious  thought  the  first 
chapter  of  Genesis  marks. 

It  is  to  my  mind  one  of  the  strangest 
ironies  of  history  that  this  chapter  should 
be  singled  out  as  distinctively  unscientific. 
It  is  the  one  chapter  in  the  Bible  that  made 
science  possible.  It  is  the  magna  charta  of 
science.  There  was  no  science  and  there 
could  be  no  science  until  men  recognized 
that  unity,  order,  and  progression  are  in- 
herent in  nature's  processes.  How  were 
men    brought    to    this    recognition?     Two 


46  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

routes  were  possible.  (1)  They  could  ac- 
cept the  unity,  order,  and  progression  of 
Genesis  and  on  this  pre-supposition  proceed 
to  verification;  (2)  without  knowledge  of  or 
belief  in  Genesis  they  could  experiment  in- 
dependently and  thus  arrive  by  induction  at 
a  knowledge  of  the  orderliness  or  potential 
science  inherent  in  nature.  Now  the  his- 
tory of  science  proves  unmistakably  that  the 
first  method  was  that  actually  followed. 
The  founders  of  modern  science,  those  on 
whom  the  great  nineteenth  century  scientists 
built,  were  Bacon,  Kepler,  Galileo,  Harvey, 
and  Newton.  These  men  believed  that 
there  was  "  mind,"  "  thought,"  ''Almighty 
power,"  "  design,"  "  intelligence,"  "  an  in- 
telligent Agent  "  in  nature.  They  believed 
it  not  because  they  had  proved  it:  proof 
came  later.  They  beheved  it  because  Gene- 
sis affirmed  it. 

'*  I  had  rather  beUeve,"  wrote  Bacon,  "  all 
the  legends  in  the  Talmud  and  the  Alcoran 
than  that  this  universal  frame  is  without  a 
mind."  Kepler  said:  "In  reading  the  se- 
crets of  Nature  I  am  thinking  the  thoughts 
of  God  after  Him."  Kepler  was  moved  to 
his  discoveries,  says  Benjamin  Pierce,^  "by 
an  exalted  faith,  anterior  and  superior  to  all 
* "  Ideality  in  the  Physical  Sciences." 


GENESIS  47 

science,  in  the  existence  of  intimate  relations 
between  the  constitution  of  man's  mind  and 
that  of  God's  firmament."  Galileo  believed 
that  his  own  discoveries  would  be  recog- 
nized not  only  as  in  harmony  with  Genesis 
but  "  as  the  most  transcendent  displays  of 
Almighty  power."  Harvey  told  Robert 
Boyle  that  he  was  led  to  discover  the  cir- 
culation of  the  blood  by  observing  that,  in 
the  channels  through  which  the  blood  flows, 
one  set  of  valves  opens  toward  the  heart 
while  another  set  opens  in  the  opposite 
direction,  and  that  he  could  not  help  beHev- 
ing  that  "  so  prudent  a  cause  as  nature  had 
not  placed  so  many  valves  without  a  de- 
sign." Newton,  in  his  first  letter  to  Bent- 
ley,  declares  that  when  he  wrote  the  third 
book  of  his  Principia  he  "  had  an  eye  upon 
such  principles  as  might  work,  with  con- 
sidering men,  for  the  belief  of  a  Deity  "  and 
he  expresses  his  happiness  that  it  has  been 
found  useful  for  that  purpose.  In  his  second 
letter  to  Bentley  (January  17,  1692-3)  he 
writes:  "I  am  compelled  to  ascribe  the 
frame  of  this  system  to  an  intelligent 
Agent." 

When  Huxley  says,  therefore,  that 
**  Science  is  the  discovery  of  the  rational 
order  that  pervades  the  universe,"  he  states 


48  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

clearly  what  might  have  been,  what  perhaps 
would  have  been.  In  historic  fact,  how- 
ever, the  founders  of  science  being  them- 
selves the  judges,  "  the  rational  order  that 
pervades  the  universe  "  was  not  discovered. 
It  was  revealed.  The  discoveries  of  science 
made  between  the  years  1600  and  1700 — and 
these  laid  the  foundations  for  all  later  sci- 
ence— are,  in  their  last  analysis,  only  veri- 
fications, combinations,  illustrations,  or, 
better  still,  acceptations,  of  the  rational 
order  proclaimed  for  the  first  time  in  the 
first  chapter  of  Genesis, 

II 

Perhaps  we  have  dwelt  too  long  upon  a 
single  chapter  but  this  chapter  constitutes 
one  of  the  two  divisions  into  which  the  book 
of  Genesis  naturally  falls.  These  divisions 
we  may  call  Creation  and  Probation. 
There  is  no  overlapping.  The  first  chapter 
is  concerned  wholly  with  creation,  while  the 
remaining  forty-nine  chapters  develop  the 
idea  of  probation.  In  the  first  chapter  the 
stage  is  built;  in  the  second  chapter  the 
drama  begins.  The  first  chapter  presents 
man  neither  as  moral  nor  as  immoral.  He 
is  merely  one  of  the  animals  created.  Only 
one  command  was  laid  upon  him  and  it  had 


GENESIS  49 

reference  solely  to  his  physical  nature. 
Conscience  was  neither  invoked  nor  in- 
volved. But  in  the  second  chapter  God 
lays  upon  man  an  ethical  responsibility. 
Man  is  not  merely  the  supreme  triumph  of 
physical  creation.  He  is  a  moral  being. 
He  can  distinguish  between  good  and  evil. 
He  is  on  probation,  and  he  knows  it.  Now 
begins  his  effort  to  get  in  tune  with  the  in- 
finite, to  establish  an  entente  cordiale  with  his 
Maker.  There  is  not  a  suggestion  of  this 
struggle  or  even  of  man's  capacity  for  such 
a  struggle  in  the  first  chapter.  It  begins  in 
the  second.  It  ends  with  the  last  chapter 
of  Revelation. 

But  every  commentator  on  Genesis,  so  far 
as  my  reading  goes,  divides  the  book,  it  is 
true,  into  two  divisions,  but  these  divisions 
run  respectively  from  the  beginning  to  the 
call  of  Abraham  and  from  the  call  of 
Abraham  to  the  close.  The  first  division  is 
called,  with  many  subdivisions,  the  Begin- 
nings of  Human  History;  the  second  is 
called  the  Traditional  Ancestors  of  the 
Hebrews.  But  the  distinctions  overlap  and 
are  confusing.  Neither  is  central  or  or- 
ganic. To  call  the  first  ten  or  eleven  chap- 
ters of  Genesis  the  Beginnings  of  Human 
History  is  to  omit  entirely  the  evenings  and 


60  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

mornings  of  the  first  five  days.  It  is  to 
ignore  entirely  the  unity,  order,  and  progres- 
sion that  make  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis 
incomparable  in  the  world's  literature.  But, 
if  one  is  going  to  make  this  omission,  why 
not  call  the  whole  of  Genesis  the  Beginnings 
of  Human  History?  Was  it  less  human 
when  Abraham  appeared?  Or,  with  the 
same  omission,  why  not  say  that  the  whole 
of  Genesis  is  devoted  to  the  Traditional 
Ancestors  of  the  Hebrews?  Adam  and 
Eve,  though  as  yet  unnamed,  appear  in  the 
first  chapter  and  they  were  traditional  an- 
cestors of  the  Hebrews. 

That  there  are  only  two  divisions  in  Gene- 
sis and  that  these  divisions  include  re- 
spectively the  first  chapter  and  the  remain- 
ing forty-nine  was  certainly  the  belief  of  the 
writer  of  the  book  of  Hebrews,  In  fact  Gefte- 
sis  is  the  only  book  of  the  Old  Testament 
that  is  analyzed  and  interpreted  as  a  book 
unit  by  a  writer  in  the  New  Testament.  In 
Hebrews  11 :  3  we  read :  "  Through  faith  we 
understand  that  the  worlds  were  framed  by 
the  word  of  God,  so  that  things  which  are 
seen  were  not  made  of  things  which  do  ap- 
pear." Is  not  that  a  perfect  interpretation 
of  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis f  Then  follows 
the  honor  roll  of  those  whose  probation  is- 


GENESIS  51 

sued  victoriously  in  an  unclouded  faith.  They 
are  Abel,  Enoch,  Noah,  Abraham,  Sara,  Isaac, 
Jacob,  and  Joseph.  "These  all  died  in  faith, 
not  having  received  the  promises,  but  hav- 
ing seen  them  afar  oflF,  and  were  persuaded 
of  them,  and  embraced  them,  and  confessed 
that  they  were  strangers  and  pilgrims  on  the 
earth"  (Hebrews  11:13).  Is  not  that  a 
perfect  interpretation  of  the  second  division 
of  Genesis f  Had  the  author  been  making  a 
summary  instead  of  an  interpretation  he 
would  have  enumerated  the  six  creative  acts 
in  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  and  he  would 
have  mentioned  Adam  and  Eve  as  examples 
of  those  in  whom  probation  wrought  dis- 
aster. He  was  dealing  with  principles,  how- 
ever, not  details.  But  that  he  does  not  find 
in  the  character  or  career  of  Abraham  any- 
thing elementally  pivotal  is  noteworthy.  It 
at  least  differentiates  the  author  of  Hebrezvs 
from  other  commentators  on  Genesis.  Abra- 
ham undoubtedly  weighed  more  than  any 
one  else  in  the  list  but  the  scales  used  were 
the  same  for  all.  His  influence  was  greater 
but  the  source  of  his  strength  was  the  source 
from  which  all  drew.  His  faith  differed  in 
degree  but  not  in  kind  from  the  faith  of 
those  who  went  before  and  those  who  came 
immediately  after  him.     His  reaction  to  pro- 


52  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

bation  was  distinctively  noble  but  it  was  not 
distinctively  different  from  the  reaction  of 
others  on  the  honor  roll. 

May  we  not  say  that,  if  the  first  chapter  of 
Genesis  marks  an  epoch  in  its  attitude  to  the 
nature  about  us,  the  remaining  chapters 
register  a  still  more  significant  advance  in 
their  attitude  to  the  nature  within  us? 
What  a  group  is  here  assembled!  There 
are  no  warriors,  no  poets,  no  scholars,  no 
demigods,  no  kings  or  queens,  no  men  or 
women  famed  merely  for  their  looks  or 
physical  prowess.  Nobody  is  distinguished 
merely  by  wealth  or  social  position.  They 
are  just  ordinary  men  and  women  trying 
to  lift  their  eyes  level  to  God's  command. 
But  they  were  the  world's  most  beneficent 
pioneers.  We  say  now  confidently  that. "A 
man's  reach  should  exceed  his  grasp,"  that 
"  One  on  God's  side  is  a  majority,"  that 
"  Right  makes  might,"  that 

Howe'er  it  be,  it  seems  to  me, 
'Tis  only  noble  to  be  good, 

that 

I  go  to  prove  my  soul ! 
I  see  my  way  as  birds  their  trackless  way. 
I  shall  arrive !  what  time,  what  circuit  first, 
I  ask  not :  but  unless  God  send  his  hail 


GENESIS  53 

Or  blinding  fireballs,  sleet  or  stifling  snow, 
In  some  time,  his  good  time,  I  shall  arrive : 
He  guides  me  and  the  bird.    In  his  good  time ! 

These  and  a  thousand  other  beacon  thoughts 
are  commonplaces  to-day.  Civilization  and 
progress  are  built  upon  them.  But  the 
heroes  of  Genesis  were  the  first  to  leave  their 
footprints  on  the  stretches  of  that  lone  way. 
They  were  not  philosophers:  philosophy  is 
the  theatre  of  the  analytic  intellect,  not  the 
drama  of  man.  Life  was  not  a  theory  with 
them.  It  was  a  faith,  a  conviction,  a  dedica- 
tion. Their  pathway  is  now  become  a 
highway,  but  the  highway,  though  broader 
and  less  obstructed,  still  points  the  way  that 
was  first  pointed  by  the  pathway.  They 
stumbled  many  a  time,  and  fell.  There  were 
no  perfect  men  among  them,  but  they  knew 
their  own  failings,  knew  them  because  of 
the  very  vividness  with  which  they  had 
glimpsed  the  unchanging  ideal.  If  science 
got  its  start  in  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis, 
man's  spiritual  history  harks  back  as  surely 
to  the  remaining  chapters.  If  there  are  no 
parallels  in  earlier  records  to  the  majestic 
story  of  Creation,  I  need  hardly  remind  you 
that  there  is  nothing  approaching  the  spiri- 
tualizing of  Probation  to  which  the  major 
part  of  Genesis  is  devoted. 


54  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

The  reader  will  miss  much  of  the  charm 
and  challenge  of  Genesis  if  he  fails  to  note 
how  clearly  the  leading  characters  in  our 
group  are  differentiated.  Each  is  a  type  but 
none  the  less  an  individual.  Each  reacted 
to  probation  differently  but  characteristic- 
ally. There  was  no  surrender  of  person- 
ality. If  thrown  into  their  company  I  be- 
lieve I  could  identify  most  of  them,  provided 
they  talked  freely  and  in  propria  persona.  It 
is  interesting  to  observe  that  the  role  that 
each  was  to  play  in  the  thought  of  the 
world  could  not  be  determined  till  the  com- 
ing of  Christ.  The  Hght  of  the  Cross 
streamed  backward  as  well  as  forward,  and 
in  that  light  much  that  was  only  translucent 
in  the  Old  Testament  became  transparent 
in  the  New.  Adam,  for  example,  is  hardly 
more  than  mentioned  in  the  Old  Testament 
outside  of  Genesis.  But  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment he  is  interpreted.  He  becomes  a  point 
de  repere,  a  contrasting  type  of  Christ.  The 
most  luminous  sentence  about  him  was  that 
of  Paul :'  "  For  as  in  Adam  all  die,  even  so 
in  Christ  shall  all  be  made  alive."  Adam 
was  neither  hero  nor  villain  but  only  a  half- 
man.  Lacking  a  childhood  and  youth  he 
lacked  also  the  directive  and  steadying  in- 
'1  Corinthians  15:22. 


GENESIS  55 

fluences  that  come  from  normally  slow  de- 
velopment. He  and  Cain  reacted  to  proba- 
tion in  a  way  that  proved  the  rule  of  faith 
through  disobedience  to  the  rule.  They 
spoke  a  dialect  that  proclaimed  by  contrast 
the  existence  of  a  standard  speech.  Abel 
has  been  called '  "  a  type  of  the  countless 
good  people  who  are  creatively  good  for 
nothing,  the  respectable  negatives  who 
might  as  well  never  have  been  born."  But 
this  is  more  Shavian  than  Biblical.  Abel  is 
rather  the  symbol  of  right  overthrown  by 
might  but  still  appealing.  It  is  at  least 
worth  noting  that  the  first  collection  of 
biographical  sketches  published  in  the  Eng- 
lish language  was  Thomas  Fuller's  Abel 
Redevivus:  or  the  Dead  yet  Speaking.  It  is  said 
of  both  Enoch  and  Noah  that  they  "  walked 
with  God."  But  Noah  was  evidently  more 
of  a  chance  companion  than  a  steady  com- 
rade of  the  Almighty's.  Though  many 
pages  are  given  to  him  he  does  not  live  more 
securely  in  his  four  chapters  than  Enoch  in 
his  one  verse:  "And  Enoch  walked  with 
God:  and  he  was  not;  for  God  took  him." 
Is  there  in  human  speech  a  more  beautiful 
or  satisfying  biography? 

^See  "The   Bible's   Prose   Epic  of  Eve  and  her 
Sons,"  by  Eric  S.  Robertson. 


56  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

But  Abraham  looms  larger  than  any  of 
them.  There  was  more  driving  force  in 
him  than  in  Isaac,  less  habitual  subtlety  than 
in  Jacob,  but  also  less  lovableness  than  in 
Joseph.  Note  the  moral  energy  released 
in  him  through  the  conviction  that  in  him 
his  descendants  would  be  blessed.  Neither 
Isaac,  nor  Jacob,  nor  Joseph  seems  to  have 
felt  as  acutely  or  as  resiliently  the  repre- 
sentative responsibility  thus  imposed.  Abra- 
ham became  the  present  consciously  condi- 
tioning the  future.  Countless  thousands 
were  to  be  made  or  marred  by  his  loyalty  or 
disloyalty.  He  is  modern  society,  for  science 
now  joins  hands  with  religion  in  making 
one's  descendants  chant  forever  in  one's 
ears :  "  Be  good  for  our  sake."  Others  had 
believed  in  one  God  before  Abraham,  and 
others  had  gone  forth  as  leaders  and  builders 
of  nations  yet  to  be.  But  it  is  certain  that 
from  Abraham  the  monotheistic  belief  has 
been  diffused  and  diffused  unbrokenly.  It 
is  certain,  too,  that  never  before  had  a 
pioneer  gone  forth  to  build  a  nation  with 
faith  in  God  as  its  foundation  and  super- 
structure. Whenever  to-day  a  great  reform 
is  inaugurated  not  by  power  nor  by  might 
but  by  a  single  soul  in  league  with  God,  the 
journey  from  Haran  begins  again.    The  real 


GEOT3SIS  '57". 

wandering  Jew  is  not  Kartaphilos  or  Ahas- 
uerus,  wretched  souls  on  whom  the  Master 
was  said  to  have  pronounced  a  curse.  It  is 
Abraham,  the  greatest  of  all  pioneer  ideal- 
ists. He  wanders  not  because  he  has  been 
cursed  but  because  he  has  been  blessed.  He 
does  not  seek  to  escape  from  his  past  but  to 
follow  the  beckonings  of  his  future.  His 
reappearances  are  not  in  remote  and  deso- 
late places  but  where  the  eyes  of  men 
glimpse  a  height  beyond  the  farthest  height 
and  a  glory  beyond  the  utmost  glory.  "  For 
he  looked  for  a  city  which  hath  foundations, 
whose  builder  and  maker  is  God." 

As  we  study  the  individual  reactions  of 
these  pioneers  the  conviction  comes  with 
new  force  that  Hebrew  monotheism  was  a 
message  to  the  individual,  not  to  the  de- 
individualized  group.  Modern  criticism  in 
its  insistence  on  Hebrew  collectivism  or  na- 
tional solidarity  has  strangely  perverted  this 
truth.  In  the  pages  of  much  Old  Testament 
criticism  of  to-day  God  seems  to  be  little 
more  than  the  director  of  a  privileged  cor- 
poration; there  is  no  direct  relationship  be- 
tween Him  and  the  individual  Hebrew;  it 
is  the  people  as  a  distinct  but  collective  unit 
that  He  addresses.  There  is  not  a  book  in 
the  Old  Testament  which,  if  read  as  a  whole, 


58  KETKOTE  STUDIES 

will  not  contradict  authoritatively  the  ex- 
cessive  and  impersonal  nationalism  which 
many  commentators  seem  determined  to 
read  into  special  passages  and  separate  in- 
cidents. The  rituaUsm  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment is,  of  course,  collective;  but  the  re- 
ligion is  individual.  Thou  and  tJiee  far  out- 
number ye  and  you.  There  is  not  a  ye  or  you 
in  the  ten  commandments;  and  even  when 
the  plural  pronoun  occurs  in  Leviticus  or 
Deuteronomy,  or  when  the  word  people  or  na- 
tion is  employed,  thou  and  thee  usually  follow 
at  once,  so  that  the  initial  mass-appeal  is 
broken  up  and  focussed  directly  and  sepa- 
rately upon  the  individual.  Monotheism 
did,  it  is  true,  develop  an  elaborate  ritual 
which  at  times  threatened  if  it  did  not 
throttle  personal  responsibility.  But  in 
Genesis  there  is  hardly  a  hint  of  ritualism. 
Religion  is  personal.  It  is  an  umbrella,  not 
a  roof.  Back  to  Genesis,  then,  means  not 
only  back  to  individualism  but  back  to  the 
saving  essence  that  religion  had  in  its  be- 
ginning, an  essence  that  the  prophets  vindi- 
cated from  generation  to  generation  and 
that  the  New  Testament  at  last  triumphantly 
restored. 

Ill 
By  way  of  summary,  did  you  ever  think 


GENESIS  59 

of  Kant's  great  saying  as  an  undesigned 
tribute  to  Genesis  f  ''  Two  things,"  he  said 
at  the  close  of  his  Critique  of  Practical  Reason, 
"  fill  the  mind  with  ever  new  and  increasing 
admiration  and  awe,  the  oftener  and  the 
more  steadily  we  reflect  upon  them :  the 
starry  heavens  above  and  the  moral  law 
within."  These  were  Kant's  two  admira- 
tions, his  two  reverences,  his  two  infinities, 
as  they  are  of  every  man  who  thinks  reso- 
lutely about  them.  Necessity  is  the  law  of 
the  first,  said  Kant,  liberty  of  the  second. 
On  the  banner  of  the  first  is  written  must, 
on  that  of  the  second  ought.  Is  it  not 
remarkable  that  the  first  book  of  the  Bible 
faces  precisely  the  two  mysteries  that 
moved  the  awe  of  the  great  philosopher, 
Creation  and  Probation?  The  last  word  of 
human  philosophy  is  thus  the  first  word  of 
the  Bible.  The  two  twin  summits  that  have 
challenged  the  climbers  of  all  ages  are  the 
starting-places  of  Genesis.  But  there  is  a 
difference.  To  the  modern  philosopher 
there  were  mists  upon  the  summits;  to  the 
author  of  Genesis  there  was  sunlight.  Two 
infinities  but  one  faith!  The  synthesis  is  in 
the  first  words  of  Genesis: "  In  the  beginning, 
God." 


Ill 

ESTHER 

I 

ESTHER  has  always  seemed  to  me  the 
best  told  story  in  the  Bible.  Who- 
ever wrote  it  was  a  master  in  the  art 
of  omitting  non-essentials  and  of  concentrat- 
ing attention  upon  what  really  counted.  He 
knew  how  to  grip  his  reader's  attention  at 
the  start,  how  to  mass  or  distribute  his  de- 
tails in  harmony  with  his  main  design,  and 
how  to  make  each  part  of  the  narrative  con- 
tribute its  quota  to  the  larger  or  superin- 
tending purpose.  I  do  not  forget  the  story 
of  Joseph,  the  idyllic  charm  of  Ruth,  or  the 
fragments  of  vivid  epics  found  in  Judges, 
But  Esther,  more  than  any  of  these,  seems  to 
me  a  sort  of  anticipation  of  an  art  that  is 
to-day  considered  almost  distinctively  Amer- 
ican,— I  mean  the  art  of  the  modern  short 
story.  The  constitution  of  this  latest  of 
literary  genres  was  drawn  up  by  Poe  when  he 
wrote,  in  1842,  that  the  goal  of  the  writer 
should  not  be  background,  plot,  or  character 
60 


ESTHER  61 

but  the  interweaving  of  these  to  produce  a 
definite  and  preconceived  effect.  "  If  his 
very  initial  sentence,"  says  Poe,  "  tend  not 
to  the  outbringing  of  this  effect,  then  he 
has  failed  in  his  first  step.  In  the  whole 
composition  there  should  be  no  word  written 
of  which  the  tendency,  direct  or  indirect,  is 
not  to  the  one  preestablished  design." 

Not  only  does  Esther  meet  this  require- 
ment of  the  modern  short  story  but  it  sur- 
passes all  short  stories,  ancient  and  modern, 
in  its  annually  recurrent  service.  A  few  days 
ago  I  clipped  the  following  announcement 
from  a  New  York  daily  paper: 

The  celebration  of  the  feast  of  Purim  will 
commence  this  evening  and  will  continue  for 
twenty-four  hours.  This  is  a  festival  of  the 
Jews  celebrated  on  the  fourteenth  day  of  the 
month  of  Adar  and  was  ordained  to  com- 
memorate the  deliverance  of  the  Jews  from 
national  destruction  by  the  Persians,  as  nar- 
rated in  the  Book  of  Esther.  The  festival 
of  Purim  is  now  a  day  of  rejoicing,  of  ex- 
changing of  gifts  among  friends  and  giving 
liberally  to  the  poor.  Its  observance  in  the 
synagogue  is  limited  to  the  reading  of  the 
Book  of  Esther,  but  in  the  homes  of  the 
orthodox  Jews  the  celebration  is  marked  by 
social  parties,  masquerades,  and  other  enter- 
tainments. 


62  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

Thus  for  more  than  two  thousand  years 
Esther  has  been  read  aloud  once  a  year  in  all 
Jewish  synagogues.  The  name  of  Haman 
is  still  greeted  with  jeers,  the  name  of  Esther 
with  cheers.  It  is  interesting  to  remember 
that  Christ  Himself  in  early  boyhood  must 
have  joined  in  the  acclaim  rendered  to 
Esther  at  this  festival,  and,  if  He  ever  jeered 
at  any  one,  He  jeered  at  the  name  of  the 
monster  who  sought  her  life  and  the  life  of 
her  people.  Just  as  Dickens's  Christmas 
Carol  revived  and  renationalized  the  waning 
celebration  of  Christmas  in  England,  so  the 
book  of  Esther  revived  and  renationalized 
the  receding  festival  of  Purim.  Just  as  the 
annual  reading  of  our  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence recalls  and  rededicates  to  a  wider 
service  our  heroic  past,  so  the  annual  read- 
ing of  Esther  has  made  of  a  Jewish  past 
a  continuous  and  continuing  present.  We 
are  not  surprised  when  history  tells  us 
of  some  great  state  paper,  or  national  epic, 
or  patriotic  song  that  has  served  for  cen- 
turies to  band  together  a  people.  But  for  a 
short  story  this  is  a  new  office.  Esther,  then, 
is  unique  not  only  in  its  modern  structure 
but  in  its  history  and  age-long  service. 


ESTHER  63 

II 

One  of  the  distinctive  excellencies  of  the 
story  lies  in  the  handling  of  the  background 
and  in  making  it  subserve  the  underlying 
purpose  of  the  narrative.  You  remember 
that  Shakespeare  begins  Macbeth  with  the 
appearance  of  the  witches  who  chant 

Fair  is  foul  and  foul  is  fair. 

This  is  one  of  the  great  keynote  scenes  in 
modern  literature.  Fair  things  were  in  fact 
to  prove  foul,  and  foul  things  fair;  friends 
were  to  appear  as  enemies  and  enemies  were 
to  be  disguised  as  friends.  The  entire  play 
pivots  around  this  chant  of  the  witches. 
With  equal  art  Esther  begins  with  Persian 
bigness  that  was  not  greatness  and  pits  con- 
sistently against  it  Jewish  greatness  that 
was  not  bigness.  The  Persian  king  ruled 
over  one  hundred  and  twenty-seven  prov- 
inces; the  Persian  banquet  lasted  one  hun- 
dred and  eighty  days  and  was  topped  off  by 
a  luncheon  of  seven  days;  the  gallows  pre- 
pared for  Mordecai  was  eighty-three  feet 
high;  the  money  to  be  wrested  from  the 
Jews  was  eighteen  million  dollars.  Against 
this  background  we  see  only  a  captive  Jew- 
ish orphan,  named  Esther,  and  her  cousin, 


64  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

named  Mordecai.  "  Little  is  big  and  big 
is  little  "  is  the  unsung  refrain  that  binds 
together  the  diverse  incidents  of  the  story 
as  the  witches'  words  bind  together  the 
diverse  incidents  of  Shakespeare's  play. 

Another  element  of  the  background  that 
intensifies  the  patriotic  appeal  is  the  foreign 
locale.  The  plot  takes  place  not  in  Jewish 
Jerusalem  but  in  Persian  and  pagan  Shu- 
shan.  Joseph  in  Egypt,  Livingstone  in  Cen- 
tral Africa,  Chinese  Gordon  in  Nubia, 
Franklin  in  Paris,  Dewey  in  Manila,  Gerard 
in  Berlin  stir  our  patriotism  far  more  than 
if  the  same  courage  or  loyalty  had  been 
shown  at  home.  The  thought  of  Esther  in 
the  far-away  land,  under  alien  skies  and 
alien  institutions,  denied  the  reassurance  of 
home  faces  and  neighbor  ways,  beyond  the 
beckoning  of  the  hills  and  streams  that  she 
knew  so  well,  this  sends  a  challenge  to  our 
interest  and  admiration  impossible  in  the 
case  of  a  Judean  locale, 

III 
The  plot  may  be  skeletonized  as  follows: 

L     Vashti    dethroned.      Enter    Queen 
Esther  (1:1-2:20). 
IL     Haman  vs.  Mordecai.     Haman  vic- 
torious (2:21-3:15). 


ESTHEE  65 

III.  "Who  knoweth  whether   thou   art 

come  to  the  kingdom  for  such  a 
time  as  this?"  (4:1-5:8). 

IV.  Between  banquets  (5:9-6:14). 
V.     The  second  banquet  (7 : 1-7 :  9). 

VI.     Victory  (7:10-9:19). 
VII.     The  Feast  of  Purim  (9 :  20-9  :  32). 
VIII.     See  for  fuller  details  ''  The  Chron- 
icles of  the  Kings  of  Media  and 
Persia"  (10:1-10:3). 

The  incidents  move  in  a  leisurely  way 
until  Esther  proposes  a  second  banquet 
(5:8).  I  do  not  know  why  she  deferred 
her  petition  from  the  first  banquet  to  the 
second,  but  I  do  know  that  the  period  '*  Be- 
tween banquets  (5:9-6:14)"  is  a  bit  of 
narrative  handling  unsurpassed  even  in  the 
Bible.  It  stamps  the  author  as  one  of  the 
great  narrative  artists.  It  marks  the  emer- 
gence in  Hebrew  literature  of  a  technique 
that  the  critics  had  considered  non-existent 
till  the  advent  of  Poe,  DeMaupassant,  Kip- 
ling, and  O.  Henry.  The  mere  facts  told  in 
the  interim  between  the  two  banquets  are 
negligible  as  facts.  If  you  are  reading  for 
facts  alone,  for  bald  objective  happenings, 
you  may  omit  this  section  entirely.  The 
verse  that  precedes  the  section  and  the  verse 
that  follows  it  seem  themselves  unaware  of 
what  lies  between.     Note  how  they  blend 


66  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

into  each  other :  "  If  I  have  found  favor  in 
the  sight  of  the  king,  and  if  it  please  the 
king  to  grant  my  petition  and  to  perform 
my  request,  let  the  king  and  Haman  come 
to  the  banquet  that  I  shall  prepare  for  them, 
and  I  v^ill  do  to-morrow  as  the  king  hath 
said.  ...  So  the  king  and  Haman  came 
to  banquet  v^ith  Esther  the  queen."  But 
between  those  two  verses  there  are  inter- 
posed twenty  verses  which,  more  than  any 
other  twenty  verses  in  the  story,  lift  the 
plot  out  of  the  category  of  routine  chronicle 
and  give  it  a  secure  place  among  the  master- 
pieces of  narrative  literature. 

These  twenty  verses  seem  commissioned 
by  the  author  to  shadow  Haman  from  ban- 
quet to  banquet.  "  Trail  him,"  the  order 
would  seem,  "  and  report  his  words,  his 
deeds,  his  thoughts.  He  has  hitherto  been 
a  mere  symbol,  an  impersonal  embodiment 
of  cruelty  and  sycophancy.  Show  him  to 
us  not  on  dress  parade  but  at  home  with 
wife  and  friends.  The  other  characters  in 
the  story  have  personality.  Invest  him  with 
it,  too.  Let  him  not  only  point  a  moral  but 
stand  for  all  time  as  a  deterrent  type  of 
actual  flesh  and  blood."  The  detective 
verses  play  their  part  well.  Let  us  follow 
them: 


ESTHEE  67 

Haman  hurries  home  from  the  first  ban- 
quet, calls  for  his  wife  and  friends,  tells 
them  exultingly  of  the  honor  shown  him,  and 
hints  still  greater  honor  at  the  banquet  set 
for  to-morrow.  "  Yet  all  this  availeth  me 
nothing,  so  long  as  I  see  Mordecai  the  Jew 
sitting  at  the  king's  gate."  His  wife  and 
friends  suggest  that  a  gallows  be  erected  at 
once  for  Mordecai  and  that  at  the  forthcom- 
ing banquet  the  king's  consent  be  secured  for 
an  immediate  execution.  The  gallows  is 
erected  during  the  night  but  "  On  that  night 
could  not  the  king  sleep."  There  is  some- 
thing ominous  in  the  tread  of  the  little  mono- 
syllables. The  king's  insomnia  marks  in  fact 
a  crisis  in  the  story ;  but,  before  the  tragedy 
falls,  there  intervenes  the  most  humorous 
scene  in  the  Bible.  Like  the  knocking  at  the 
gate  in  Macbeth  it  is  a  buffer  scene  thrust 
between  the  tenseness  that  precedes  and  the 
heightened  tenseness  that  is  to  follow. 
Haman  arrives  and  learns  that  the  king  has 
just  asked  for  him.  His  majesty's  much 
banqueting,  it  seems,  had  dulled  his  memory 
of  current  events.  So,  while  he  lies  tossing 
and  while  not  a  parasang  away  the  finishing 
touches  are  being  put  on  the  gallows,  he  asks 
that  some  one  read  to  him  the  record  of 
recent  happenings.  Learning  that  one  named 
Mordecai  had  saved  his  majesty's  life  a  few 
days  before  but  had  gone  unrewarded,  the 


68  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

king  wakes  to  a  sense  of  obligation  rightly- 
incurred  but  strangely  overlooked.  "Who  is 
in  the  court  ?  "  he  asks.  "  Haman."  Haman, 
knowing  nothing  of  the  reading,  was  at  that 
very  moment  conning  his  petition  about 
Mordecai  and  the  gallows.  As  he  enters 
and  salutes,  the  king  asks  yawningly :  "  What 
shall  be  done  unto  the  man  whom  the  king 
delighteth  to  honor  ?  "  Haman  had  his  an- 
swer pat.  The  very  elaborateness  of  it 
shows  that  the  question  had  long  been  antici- 
pated and  that  the  answer  had  probably  been 
formulated  after  a  conference  with  his  wife 
and  friends :  *'  Let  the  royal  apparel  be 
brought  which  the  king  useth  to  wear,  and 
the  horse  that  the  king  rideth  upon,  and  the 
crown  royal  which  is  set  upon  his  head. 
And  let  this  apparel  and  horse  be  delivered 
to  the  hand  of  one  of  the  king's  most  noble 
princes,  that  they  may  array  the  man  withal 
whom  the  king  delighteth  to  honor,  and  bring 
him  on  horseback  through  the  street  of  the 
city,  and  proclaim  before  him,  Thus  shall  it 
be  done  to  the  man  whom  the  king  delight- 
eth to  honor."  Was  there  ever  a  better  auto- 
biography in  miniature  ? 

Did  the  king  smile  as  he  answered,  "  Do 
even  so  to  Mordecai  the  Jew  "  ?  I  think  not. 
But  I  know  that  Jewish  men  and  women  and 
boys  and  girls,  peeping  timidly  from  half 
opened  doors,  smiled  at  that  strange  proces- 


ESTHER  69 

sion  as  they  had  never  smiled  before.  And 
every  year  the  procession  is  renewed  at  the 
Feast  of  Purim.  Down  through  the  cen- 
turies pedestrian  Haman  still  solemnly  stalks 
leading  the  horse  for  equestrian  Mordecai; 
and  the  smiles  break  into  laughter,  for  faith 
is  rekindled  and  old  memories  are  stirred  and 
patriotism  flames  anew  upon  its  oldest  and 
most  sacred  altars.  Through  what  streets  of 
Shushan  the  procession  wound  we  are  not 
told.  Not  many  Jewish  homes,  I  think,  were 
omitted ;  but  the  street  that  led  by  Haman's 
home  was  not  on  the  route.  His  wife  and 
friends  knew  nothing  of  it  all  till  he  "  hasted 
to  his  house  mourning  and  having  his  head 
covered  "  and  told  them  what  had  befallen 
him.  He  had  but  a  moment  to  stay,  for  the 
hour  of  the  second  banquet  had  come.  His 
wife  and  friends  found  time,  however,  to  tell 
him  as  he  passed  out  of  the  door,  **  If  Mor- 
decai be  of  the  seed  of  the  Jews,  before 
whom  thou  hast  begun  to  fall,  thou  shalt  not 
prevail  against  him,  but  shalt  surely  fall  be- 
fore him."  There  was  no  time  to  answer, 
for  "  while  they  were  yet  talking  with  him, 
came  the  king's  chamberlains  and  hasted  to 
bring  Haman  unto  the  banquet  that  Esther 
had  prepared." 

Our  twenty  verses  flow  back  now  into  the 
central  current.     Their  metier  has  been  to 


70  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

reveal  the  kind  of  man  that  Haman  really 
and  inwardly  was.  When  he  swings  at 
nightfall  from  the  gallows  that  he  had 
erected  for  Mordecai,  our  moral  sense  is 
satisfied  because  our  detective  verses  have 
made  the  record  clear  against  him,  have 
brought  into  sharp  relief  his  essential  and 
ineradicable  wolfishness,  and  thus  rendered 
his  execution  a  necessity  in  the  forward 
march  of  mercy  and  righteousness. 

IV 
But  the  characters  are  to  me  more  in- 
teresting than  the  plot.  The  author  of  the 
story  had  not  only  an  unerring  feeling  for 
background  and  incident  but  an  equally  sure 
eye  for  character  traits.  Each  character  is 
portrayed  from  within.  A  few  deft  strokes 
and  the  controlling  motives  stand  clearly 
limned.  In  no  other  book  of  the  Bible  is 
there  a  more  effective  use  of  conversation, 
the  direct  words  being  given  wherever 
vividness  is  desired.  Ahasuerus,  Memucan, 
Haman,  Mordecai,  and  Esther  all  speak  in 
the  first  person  and  all  speak  self-reveal- 
ingly.  This  use  of  direct  discourse  is  pecul- 
iarly a  mark  of  the  modern  short  story  and 
is  thus  another  link  binding  the  technique  of 
Esther    to    our    own    times.     To    feel    the 


ESTHER  71 

superiority  of  the  direct  form  of  statement 
here  employed,  recast  some  of  the  conversa- 
tions and  note  the  loss  in  force  and  appeal. 
Instead  of  "  Who  knoweth  whether  thou  art 
come  to  the  kingdom  for  such  a  time  as 
this?"  suppose  the  form  had  been:  "  Mor- 
decai  asked  Esther  if  she  was  acquainted 
with  any  one  who  knew  whether  she  was 
come  to  the  kingdom  for  such  a  time  as 
that."  The  skeleton  remains,  but  the  life 
has  gone. 

As  in  Genesis,  so  in  Bsfher,  each  character 
is  a  type  but  also  an  individual.  The  two 
terms  are  often  confused.  The  writer  of 
Esther,  like  Shakespeare,  probably  had  no 
conscious  thought  of  the  distinction  here 
made  between  the  individual  and  the  type; 
but  both  wrote  from  life  and  in  life  the  dis- 
tinction is  writ  large  upon  every  page.  An 
individual  character,  whether  in  life  or 
literature,  is  a  character  that  is  sharply  dif- 
ferentiated from  all  other  characters.  The 
differential  may  be  physical  or  mental  or 
moral,  an  excellence  or  a  defect,  an  asset  or 
a  liability.  Typical  characters,  on  the  con- 
trary, embody  some  well-known  virtue  or 
vice,  some  commonplace  of  philosophy, 
some  widely  diffused  principle  of  thought  or 
action,  some  everyday  epidemic  of  behavior. 


72  KEYKOTE  STUDIES 

and  embody  it  so  exclusively  that  tlie  per- 
son yields  to  the  trait.  The  individual 
character  stands  for  one,  the  type  character 
for  many.  The  individual  character  is 
singular  in  form  and  function;  the  type 
character  is  singular  in  form,  but  Uke  our 
collective  nouns,  crowd,  congregation^  army, 
navy,  plural  in  function.  It  is  easy  to  see 
and  say  that  a  character  is  individual  but  we 
cannot  pronounce  a  character  typical  until 
our  circuit  of  knowledge  enables  us  to 
classify  him.  The  use  of  the  term  typical, 
therefore,  is  measured  wholly  by  the  range 
and  variety  of  characters,  real  or  fictive, 
that  we  know.  All  characters  are  individual 
to  children  but  increasingly  typical  to  their 
parents.  It  is  the  type  qualities  that  the 
Bible  writers  chiefly  stress  and  it  is  these  in 
Esther  that  I  shall  touch  upon  during  the 
remainder  of  the  hour. 

Ahasuerus  is  a  tank  that  runs  blood  or 
wine  according  to  the  hand  that  turns  the 
spigot.  Though  he  was  the  source  of  all 
executive  power  in  the  story  he  himself 
originates  nothing.  The  dethronement  of 
Vashti,  the  method  of  selecting  her  suc- 
cessor, the  proposed  destruction  of  the 
Jews,  the  counter  decree,  the  honor  to  Mor- 
decai,  the  execution  of  Haman,  not  one  of 


ESTHER  73 

these  was  proposed  by  the  king.  He  only 
adopted  them.  Read  the  record  again  and 
observe  how  accurately  the  author  has 
caught  the  note  of  majestic  inertia  that 
characterizes  the  Oriental  monarch.  Among 
the  leading  characters  of  the  story  he  alone 
is  stationary,  all  the  others  passing  from 
high  to  low  or  low  to  high  as  the  story  ad- 
vances. He  remains  at  the  end  the  same 
vast  and  vacant  stretch  of  immobility  that 
he  was  at  the  beginning.  He,  by  the  way, 
is  our  old  friend  Xerxes,  who,  according  to 
Herodotus,  ordered  three  hundred  stripes 
to  be  inflicted  on  the  ocean  because  his 
ships  had  been  dashed  to  pieces  and  com- 
manded that  the  Phenician  mechanics  who 
built  the  ships  should  be  put  to  death.  If 
you  think  these  measures  show  a  reach  of 
self-origination  beyond  the  range  of  Xerxes 
as  he  is  pictured  in  Esther,  turn  again  to 
Herodotus  and  you  will  find  that,  true  to 
type,  Xerxes  is  represented  as  proposing 
neither  penalty.  Here  again  he  merely 
seconds  and  adopts.  Perhaps  an  exception 
should  be  made  in  the  case  of  the  many 
banquets  occurring  in  Esther.  I  am  incHned 
to  think  that  his  majesty  was  here  the  orig- 
inal proponent.  The  word  "banquet,"  it 
may  be  added,  occurs  twenty  times  in  Esther 


74  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

and  only  twenty  times  in  the  remaining 
thirty-eight  books  of  the  Old  Testament. 
In  other  words,  Ahasuerus  and  his  trencher- 
mates  consumed  as  much  in  five  days  as  had 
been  consumed  by  all  the  other  Old  Testa- 
ment characters  from  Genesis  to  Malachi. 
Ahasuerus  was  used  for  good  in  the  story 
but  he  deserves  and  receives  no  credit  for 
it.  He  is  not  so  much  a  character,  after  all, 
as  a  state  of  mind  or,  better  still,  a  state  of 
body.  No  man  ever  missed  a  greater  op- 
portunity. He  was  brought  face  to  face 
with  the  two  greatest  world-civilizations  in 
history,  Hebraism  and  Hellenism;  but,  un- 
derstanding neither,  he  remains  only  a 
muddy  place  in  the  road  along  which  Greek 
and  Hebrew  passed  to  world  conquest. 

Haman  was  a  fit  minister  for  his  king. 
Though  a  blend  of  vanity  and  cruelty  and 
cowardice  he  was  not  without  some  power 
of  initiative.  But  egotism  had  destroyed 
all  sense  of  proportion  in  him.  A  sense  of 
humor,  that  stabilizer  of  national  and  in- 
dividual character,  was  thus  impossible  to 
him.  He  begets  laughter  but  was  incapable 
of  sharing  it.  He  lives  in  history  as  one 
who,  better  than  in  Hamlet's  immortal 
phrase,  was  "  hoist  with  his  own  petard," 
the  petard  in  Haman's  case  being  a  gallows 


ESTHER  75 

eighty-three  feet  high.  He  typifies  also  the 
just  fate  of  the  man  who,  spurred  by  the 
hate  of  one,  includes  in  his  scheme  of  ex- 
termination a  whole  people.  "And  he 
thought  scorn  to  lay  hands  on  Mordecai 
alone;  for  they  had  shewed  him  the  people 
of  Mordecai:  wherefore  Haman  sought  to 
destroy  all  the  Jews  that  were  throughout 
the  whole  kingdom  of  Ahasuerus,  even  the 
people  of  Mordecai."  Collective  vengeance 
never  received  a  better  illustration  nor  a 
more  exemplary  or  lustrous  punishment. 

Mordecai  is  altogether  admirable  in  re- 
fusing to  kowtow  to  Haman  and  in  his  un- 
selfish devotion  to  his  fair  cousin.  The 
cause  of  the  rooted  enmity  between  him  and 
Haman  has  been  differently  explained.  But 
does  it  need  explanation?  It  may  have  been 
that  Haman  wore  on  his  person  some  idol- 
atrous symbol  to  which  Mordecai  would  not 
do  obeisance;  it  may  have  been  that  Mor- 
decai, a  Benjamite,  recognized  in  Haman, 
the  Amalekite,  an  ancestral  foe  (1  Samuel 
15:33).  But  neither  supposition  is  neces- 
sary and  both  do  discredit  to  the  kind  of 
motivation  employed  by  the  author.  Had 
he  intended  either  of  these  motives  to  be 
central  in  the  character  of  Mordecai  he 
would  have  hinted  or  plainly  indicated  as 


76  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

much.  What  he  evidently  meant  us  to  see 
as  central  and  controlling  in  Mordecai's  con- 
duct was  a  simple  loyalty  to  the  faith  of  his 
fathers  that  forbade  the  low  and  servile 
salaam  to  arrogant  and  aggressive  pagan- 
ism. "  But  Mordecai  bowed  not,  nor  did 
him  reverence."  Where  he  felt  no  rever- 
ence, Mordecai  would  not  flaunt  the  symbol 
of  reverence.  He  would  not  commission 
his  body  to  tell  the  He  that  his  spirit  scorned 
to  tell. 

But  Esther  is,  of  course,  the  central  char- 
acter. She  is  the  only  character  in  the  story 
and  one  of  the  few  in  the  Bible  whose  per- 
sonal appearange  is  described  and  described 
unforgettably.  Not  only  was  she  "  fair  and 
beautiful  "  but  she  "  obtained  favor  in  the 
sight  of  all  them  that  looked  upon  her." 
The  words  are  peculiarly  presentive  and  pic- 
torial. Esther  appears  before  us  not  only 
as  "  fair  "  but  as  winning  "  favor."  There 
was  something  about  her  beauty  that 
evoked  not  only  admiration  but  good  will. 
She  was,  I  take  it,  a  blend  of  Juliet  and 
Cordelia,  of  Homer's  Helen  and  Dante*s 
Beatrice. 

But  it  is  not  her  beauty  that  has  sent  her 
name  down  the  ages.  It  is  not  her  beauty 
that  makes  her  the  central  and  centralizing 


ESTHER  77 

character  in  the  story.  It  is  her  hospi|;ality 
to  the  great  question  put  by  Mordecai : 
*'  Who  knoweth  whether  thou  art  come  to 
the  kingdom  for  such  a  time  as  this?  "  You 
will  miss  the  distinctive  note  of  the  whole 
book  if  you  do  not  weigh  well  the  import  of 
this  question,  for  Esther's  instant  reaction 
to  it  marks  the  spiritual  crisis  of  the  book. 
Imagine  the  vacant  and  bovine  countenance 
that  would  have  been  turned  upon  you  if 
you  had  asked  Ahasuerus  or  any  of  his  sub- 
jects this  penetrating  question.  But,  if  I 
mistake  not,  the  question  was  an  habitual 
one  with  Mordecai  and  Esther.  It  repre- 
sents an  attitude  rather  than  a  gesture,  a  bit 
of  Palestinian  sky  still  visible  from  Persian 
soil,  a  strain  of  Judean  music  still  heard 
amid  the  discords  of  pagan  captivity.  It  is 
the  one  question  in  the  book  that  runs  the 
line  of  cleavage  between  heathen  and 
Hebrew  thought.  By  it  and  its  answer 
we  measure  the  altitude  of  the  spiritual 
levels  on  which  the  captive  Jews  were  living. 
They  brought  with  them  from  Jerusalem 
and  still  cherished  in  Shushan  the  conviction 
that  God  had  a  purpose  in  each  human  life; 
that  events  were  to  be  scrutinized  for  divine 
beckonings;  that  what  was  impenetrable  to 
unbelief,  or  merely  translucent  to  hope,  was 


78  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

transparent  to  faith ;  that  national  tragedies, 
like  the  captivity  in  Persia,  had  not  only  a 
collective  meaning  for  the  Jewish  people  but 
an  individual  meaning  for  each  believing 
Jew;  that  chance  and  accident  and  fate  had 
no  place  in  the  Jewish  vocabulary;  that  a 
change  of  locale  did  not  mean  a  change  of 
morale;  and  that  human  life  itself,  though 
crowned  with  queenship,  was  to  be  thrown 
unhesitatingly  into  the  scales  if  God's  pur- 
pose could  thereby  find  fulfillment. 

If  Esther  had  been  even  tinctured  by 
Persian  fatalism  she  would  have  met  Mor- 
decai's  question  by  countering  on  the  futil- 
ity of  attempting  to  stay  the  march  of 
things  immutably  ordered.  Certainly  it 
seemed  futile,  for  not  only  had  the  decree 
of  the  king  been  sealed  and  sent  but  all 
petitionary  access  to  his  person  had  been 
denied.  The  Persian  attitude  to  Mordecai's 
query  finds  its  perfect  expression  in  the 
later  lines  of  one  of  Persia's  greatest  poets : 

The  moving  finger  writes  and  having  writ 
Moves  on,  nor  all  your  Piety  nor  Wit 
Shall  lure  it  back  to  cancel  half  a  line 
Nor  all  your  tears  wash  out  a  word  of  it. 

Or,  if  Esther  had  not  been  tinctured  by 
Persian  thought  but  had  only  grown  lax 


ESTHER  79 

in  her  hold  on  Jewish  thought,  she  would 
at  least  have  denied  the  applicability  of 
such  a  question  to  her.  "  Am  I  not 
queen?"  she  might  have  said.  "Why  I 
came  to  the  land  of  Persia  is  no  longer  de- 
batable. See  my  robes  and  my  crown. 
My  queenship  is  the  answer."  Is  there  not 
a  lesson  for  us  here?  Is  success,  mere  suc- 
cess, ever  an  answer  to  the  great  "  Who 
knoweth  whether?"  that  knocks  sooner  or 
later  at  the  door  of  each  of  us  when  we 
front  a  crisis?  "Prosperity,"  says  Bacon, 
"is  the  blessing  of  the  Old  Testament; 
adversity  is  the  blessing  of  the  New."  This 
is  not  quite  just  to  the  Old  Testament  or 
to  the  New.  Esther,  at  any  rate,  looked  on 
her  prosperity  not  as  an  end  in  itself  but 
as  only  a  means  to  an  end. 

I  have  called  this  question  with  its  answer 
the  crisis  of  the  story,  and  so  it  is.  It  is 
the  result  of  all  that  has  gone  before  and 
the  cause  of  all  that  follows;  it  is  the  fruit 
of  the  past,  the  seed  of  the  future.  Back- 
ground, plot,  and  characters  would,  without 
this  question  and  answer,  be  a  shell  without 
a  kernel,  a  storage  battery  without  power, 
a  body  without  life,  a  wheel  without  an 
axle.  "  If  his  very  initial  sentence,"  says 
Foe, — read  the  lines  again  and  see  if  first 


80  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

sentence  and  last  sentence  do  not  find  in 
this  question  their  common  goal  and  tryst- 
ing-place. 

But  this  victorious  question  and  answer 
control  not  only  the  structure  but  the 
spiritual  significance  of  the  story.  "  As  cer- 
tain objects,"  says  William  James/  ''  natu- 
rally awaken  love,  anger,  or  cupidity,  so  cer- 
tain ideas  naturally  awaken  the  energies  of 
loyalty,  courage,  endurance,  or  devotion. 
When  these  ideas  are  effective  in  an  indi- 
vidual's life,  their  effect  is  often  very  great 
indeed.  They  may  transfigure  it,  unlocking 
innumerable  powers  which,  but  for  the  idea, 
would  never  have  come  into  play."  Among 
these  "  energy-releasing  ideas  "  Professor 
James  mentions  "Flag,"  "Union,"  "Monroe 
Doctrine,"  "  Truth,"  "  Science,"  "  Liberty." 

Among  energy-releasing  questions  I 
should  place  first,  "  Who  knoweth  whether 
thou  art  come  to  the  kingdom  for  such  a 
time  as  this?"  Not  only  did  it  unlock  a 
reservoir  of  latent  power  in  Esther  but  since 
her  time  men  have  gone  to  the  stake,  have 
built  and  torn  down  principalities  and 
powers,  have  faced  smiling  a  hostile  world, 
have  moulded  the  opinion  of  centuries,  and 
transformed  the  conduct  of  ages  on  the 
""The  Energies  of  Men." 


ESTHEE  81 

dynamic  conviction  that  they  had  been  sent 
to  the  kingdom  '*  for  such  a  time  as  this." 

Esther  is  more  than  a  short  story.  It  is  a 
bit  of  constructive  ideahsm  flawlessly  con- 
ceived and  faultlessly  embodied. 


IV 

JOB 

I 

TO  feel  the  greatness  of  this  book 
and  to  estimate  its  unique  contribu- 
tion to  Old  Testament  thought,  let 
me  suggest  that  you  consider  this  problem : 
What  would  be  the  effect  on  the  character 
of  a  community  if  every  man  in  it  thought 
that  all  adversity,  v^hether  of  body,  mind,  or 
estate,  was  caused  by  sin  secretly  com- 
mitted and  resolutely  imconfessed?  Your 
neighbor  has  money  in  a  supposedly  sound 
bank  and  wakes  to  find  his  hope  of  security 
for  old  age  and  of  competence  for  those  de- 
pendent upon  him  swept  away  in  a  night 
You,  a  representative  of  the  thought  of  such 
a  community,  could  only  say  by  way  of  com- 
fort: "  Confess  your  guilt  and  thus  stay  the 
further  impoverishment  that  will  surely  at- 
tend upon  sin  knowingly  committed  but 
publicly  denied."  The  same  neighbor  loses 
by  some  ravenous  epidemic  all  of  his  sons 
82 


JOB  83 

and  daughters.  "  Villain  and  hypocrite," 
you  must  say  to  him,  "  have  you  no  feeling 
for  those  near  and  dear  to  you?  Proclaim 
your  crime,  keep  back  nothing,  and  thus 
arrest  if  you  cannot  avert  the  just  doom  of 
a  righteous  God  upon  the  w^ider  circle  of 
those  whom  you  are  supposed  to  love." 
Your  neighbor  again  wakes  to  find  his  body 
caught  in  the  grip  of  a  prolonged  and  tor- 
turing disease.  Your  prompt  and  consistent 
diagnosis  is :  "  Every  pang  that  you  suffer 
is  a  penalty  for  divine  law  violated  with  full 
knowledge  but  with  a  craft  and  cunning 
that  have  hitherto  evaded  the  scrutiny  of 
your  friends.  Tell  us  all  about  it  and  thus, 
if  you  do  not  regain  health,  you  may  at 
least  escape  an  impending  and  retributive 
death." 

I  cannot  imagine  a  tyranny  more  merci- 
less than  the  sovereignty  of  a  philosophy  like 
that  would  impose.  Weakness  is  wicked- 
ness; all  kinds  and  degrees  of  suffering  be- 
come but  so  many  incitements  to  Pharisaical 
denunciation ;  comfort,  sympathy,  kindness, 
generosity,  fellowship, — why,  these  would 
be  impossible  and  unthinkable  in  a  com- 
munity governed  by  so  heartless  a  code. 
But  suppose  that  not  only  a  community  was 
so  infected  but  the  very  fiber  of  a  nation's 


84  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

faith ;  suppose,  too,  that  this  nation  was  the 
nation  from  which  the  world's  Saviour  was 
to  come,  and  this  faith  the  faith  that  in  a 
purer  form  was  destined  to  alleviate  and 
consecrate  the  very  sufferings  which  this 
detestable  philosophy  stigmatized.  Surely 
some  national  corrective  would  be  needed 
and  needed  urgently.  Such  a  corrective  is 
the  book  of  Job. 

If  you  are  inclined  to  say,  "Why,  this 
doctrine  seems  to  me  so  pagan  and  ab- 
horrent as  not  to  deserve  so  elaborate  a 
refutation,**  let  me  remind  you  that  the  book 
of  Job  not  only  refutes  the  old  doctrine  but 
substitutes  the  doctrine  of  Christ  in  its 
stead ;  that  the  patriarchal  period  of  Jewish 
history  with  its  pictures  of  teeming  families, 
fields,  and  flocks,  and  with  its  advanced 
hygienic  code,  undoubtedly  predisposed  the 
nation  to  regard  prosperity  as  inseparable 
from  pi-ety ;  that  Christ  more  than  once  had 
to  rebuke  the  same  misinterpretation  of  cur- 
rent disaster;  that  the  doctrine  survives 
to-day  in  exact  proportion  as  men  believe 
blindly  in  a  superior  power  but  are  ignorant 
of  the  existence  of  the  laws  of  nature ;  that 
disease  and  death  are  in  most  cases  traceable 
to  violations  of  nature's  laws,  though  these 
laws  are  of  course  not  moral,  their  violation 


JOB  85 

being  due  to  ignorance,  not  to  sin ;  and  that, 
as  Christ  was  Himself  to  be,  like  Job,  "  a 
man  of  sorrows  and  acquainted  with  grief," 
the  persistence  of  this  doctrine  without 
canonical  check  would  have  rendered  His 
mission  the  more  difficult  and  His  character 
the  more  problematical. 

II 
Of   the   three   divisions   into   which   Job 
falls,— 

I.     Job  Chosen  for  Testing  (1-2), 
n.     Job  and  His  Friends  (3-37), 
in.     Job  and  God  (38-42), 

the  first  marks  the  central  contribution  of 
the  book  to  the  problem  discussed.  In 
these  two  chapters  God  is  revealed  as  per- 
mitting Job  to  suffer  in  body,  mind,  and 
estate,  not  as  a  penalty  but  as  a  preroga- 
tive; not  to  appease  the  divine  nature  but 
to  vindicate  human  nature;  not  to  cast  the 
patriarch  down  but  to  build  him  up;  not 
because  he  was  good  and  happy  but  because 
he  could  be  made  better  and  happier;  not  to 
fetter  him  in  pain  but  to  release  in  him  those 
spiritual  powers  and  appetencies  of  whose 
existence  Job  was  himself  ignorant  till  the 


86  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

days  of  testing  came.  That  the  level  of 
these  two  chapters  was  far  above  the  level 
of  contemporary  thought  is  proved  by  the 
fact  that  not  one  of  Job's  friends  even 
hinted  at  such  an  explanation  of  his  suffer- 
ing. 

These  two  chapters,  though  they  have 
little  of  the  imagery  and  eloquence  of  the 
succeeding  chapters,  mark  one  of  the  table- 
lands of  divine  truth.  It  was  a  pivotal 
moment  in  Hebrew  history  when  the  Maker 
of  men  was  self-revealed  as  viewing  char- 
acter not  as  protected  innocence  but  as  dis- 
ciplined virtue;  as  proclaiming  that 

Only  the  prism's  obstruction  shows  aright 
The  secret  of  a  sunbeam,  breaks  its  light 
Into  the  jewelled  bow  from  blankest  white ; 

as  bidding  His  followers  in  all  after-ages  to 
see  in  affliction  not  the  mailed  fist  but  the 
beckoning  hand.  The  world  had  to  wait 
till  Christ  came  before  it  was  to  receive  a 
revelation  so  energizing  in  its  appeal  or  so 
assuaging  in  its  effect. 

Like  all  great  revelations  in  the  Bible, 
this  revelation  of  the  ministry  of  adversity 
corresponded  to  an  innate  yearning  of 
humanity  and  has  found  instant  and  trium- 
phant verification  wherever  men  have  risen 


JOB  87 

on  "  stepping-stones  of  their  dead  selves  to 
higher  things."  I  need  hardly  remind  you 
that  Goethe  took  the  entire  thought-process 
oi  Faust  from  these  two  chapters  or  that 
**  the  land  of  Uz  "  became  at  once  not  so 
much  a  geographical  expression  as  the  chal- 
lenge of  a  new  faith  and  the  paean  of  a  new 
hope.  The  real  land  of  Uz  is  not  on  the 
map.  It  is  in  the  hearts  of  those  who  have 
passed  through  night  to  light,  through 
storm  to  calm,  through  frost  to  spring, 
through  woe  to  weal;  who  have  built 
stepping-stones  of  stumbling-blocks;  who 
have  found  that  the  via  crucis  is  but  another 
name  for  the  via  lucis, 

III 
But  can  man  meet  the  test?  Has  he 
enough  moral  resilience  to  "  find  in  loss  a 
gain  to  match  "?  If  the  first  two  chapters 
are  a  revelation  of  the  character  of  God,  the 
thirty-five  chapters  that  follow  contain  a 
corresponding  revelation  of  the  character  of 
man.  As  far  as  the  book  of  Job  may  be 
called  a  problem,  these  two  divisions  state 
it  and  solve  it.  Had  Job  known  the  con- 
tents of  chapters  one  and  two,  had  he  been 
told  that  God  was  with  him  in  his  trial  and 
permitted  it  only  to  educe  the  man  in  him 


88  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

and  to  bless  mankind  through  him,  the 
struggle  would  not  have  been  so  long  or  so 
severe.  If  I  estimate  the  character  of  Job 
aright,  it  w^ould  hardly  have  been  a  struggle 
at  all.  But  Job  did  not  know.  He  was 
thrown  back  on  the  fundamentals  of  his 
faith,  on  the  bare  essentials  of  his  character. 
He  was  chosen  as  a  test  case  to  prove 
whether  or  not  humanity  could  in  the  fire 
of  affliction  consume  its  dross  and  refine  its 
gold.  *'  The  moral  life  of  man,"  says 
Froude,  "  is  like  the  flight  of  a  bird  in  the 
air.  He  is  sustained  only  by  effort,  and 
when  he  ceases  to  exert  himself  he  falls." 
Carlyle  and  Browning  have  polarized  the 
same  stimulant  thought  in  a  hundred  ways. 
But  Job  wrought  out  the  great  truth  in  the 
forge  of  his  own  experience  long  before  it 
became  a  problem  of  psychology  or  a  theme 
of  literature. 

He  did  it  too  in  solitariness  that  was  in- 
tensified by  the  presence  of  four  counselors 
who  parroted  the  conventional  common- 
places of  the  day  but  whose  amazing  self- 
righteousness  put  acid  in  Job's  wounds 
instead  of  oil.  It  is  hardly  worth  while  to 
individualize  these  men.  There  were  minor 
differences,  it  is  true,  but  they  all  revolved 
around  the  conviction  that  Job  had  com- 


JOB  89 

mitted  some  monstrous  crime  and  was  too 
cowardly  to  confess  it.  I  have  always  felt 
a  measure  of  gratitude  to  them  because  they 
made  Job  talk.  Without  them  he  would 
probably  have  remained  silent,  and  the  re- 
sult of  his  testing  would  have  been  summed 
up  for  us  at  the  end  in  a  general  and  imper- 
sonal way.  The  quartet  deserve  no  credit 
for  it,  but  they  compelled  Job  to  self- 
defense  through  self-expression  and  thus 
made  these  chapters  a  sort  of  spiritual 
autobiography. 

But  Job's  repHes  reveal  more  than  his 
own  nature.  They  reveal  the  possibiUties 
of  language  in  the  expression  of  soaring  and 
elusive  thought.  You  will  miss  much  of  the 
invigorating  appeal  of  this  book  if  you  do 
not  see  in  Job  one  of  the  sovereigns  of 
speech.  From  his  first  word  to  his  last  he 
holds  us  in  a  sort  of  spell  not  merely  because 
he  speaks  for  us  but  because  he  is  endowed 
with  a  range  and  adequacy  and  wizardry  of 
utterance  beyond  the  reach  of  any  mortal 
that  ever  traversed  that  dim  region  of  half 
lights  and  tried  to  tell  what  he  saw.  Pain, 
grief,  doubt,  dejection,  these  usually  inhibit 
speech;  but  in  this  man  they  release  and 
illumine  it.  Coleridge  once  defined  dejec- 
tion as 


90  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

A  drowsy,  stifled,  unimpassioned  grief. 
Which  finds  no  natural  outlet  or  relief 
In  word,  or  sigh,  or  tear. 

That  may  be  your  dejection  or  mine,  but  it 
was  not  Job's.  Dejection  for  him  unlocked 
the  treasuries  of  thought  and  feeling,  of 
hope  and  will,  of  imagery  and  vision,  and 
gave  to  each  its  fitting  form  and  investi- 
ture. 

I  do  not  know  whether  Job's  vocabulary 
has  ever  been  counted  as  they  have  counted 
Milton's  and  Shakespeare's.  The  mere 
number  of  words  would  not  be  large ;  but  in 
the  use  of  these  words,  in  making  concrete 
terms  like  "  day,"  "  night,"  "  stars,"  "  twi- 
light," "sea,"  "brook,"  "wind,"  "cloud," 
"  mountain,"  "  snow,"  "  storm,"  throw  their 
changing  splendors  upon  the  arena  of  his 
struggle,  in  turning  the  currents  of  experi- 
ence into  the  central  channel  of  expression, 
Job  remains  the  supreme  Old  Testament 
model.  Note  the  singing  quality  in  him  that 
finds  beauty  where  only  blankness  and 
bleakness  had  been  before.  Most  of  us  in 
Job's  first  mood  would  have  said,  "  I  wish 
I  had  never  been  born,"  and  let  it  go  at 
that.  But  Job  moves  to  the  dark  thought 
in  great  spirals  of  sombre  imagery :  "  Let 


JOB  91 

the  day  perish  wherein  I  was  born,  and  the 
night  in  which  it  was  said,  There  is  a  man 
child  conceived.  Let  that  day  be  darkness; 
let  not  God  regard  it  from  above,  neither 
let  the  light  shine  upon  it.  Let  darkness 
and  the  shadow  of  death  stain  it;  let  a  cloud 
dwell  upon  it;  let  the  blackness  of  the  day 
terrify  it.  As  for  that  night,  let  darkness 
seize  upon  it;  let  it  not  be  joined  unto  the 
days  of  the  year,  let  it  not  come  into  the 
number  of  the  months.  Lo,  let  that  night 
be  solitary,  let  no  joyful  voice  come  therein. 
Let  them  curse  it  that  curse  the  day,  who 
are  ready  to  raise  up  their  mourning.  Let 
the  stars  of  the  twilight  thereof  be  dark; 
let  it  look  for  light,  but  have  none;  neither 
let  it  see  the  dawning  of  the  day  "  (3 :  3-9). 
He  longs  for  the  grave  and  the  grave  is 
shot  through  with  a  strange  and  haunting 
beauty :  **  There  the  wicked  cease  from 
troubling;  and  there  the  weary  be  at  rest. 
There  the  prisoners  rest  together;  they 
hear  not  the  voice  of  the  oppressor.  The 
small  and  the  great  are  there;  and  the  serv- 
ant is  free  from  his  master"  (3:17-19). 
He  cries  out  for  wisdom  and  understanding, 
and  in  the  very  cry  builds  a  palace  for  them 
to  dwell  in :  "  Where  shall  wisdom  be 
found?  and  where  is  the  place  of  under- 


92  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

standing?  Man  knoweth  not  the  price 
thereof;  neither  is  it  found  in  the  land  of 
the  living.  The  depth  saith,  It  is  not  in  me : 
and  the  sea  saith,  It  is  not  with  me.  It  can- 
not be  gotten  for  gold,  neither  shall  silver 
be  weighed  for  the  price  thereof.  It  cannot 
be  valued  with  the  gold  of  Ophir,  with  the 
precious  onyx,  or  the  sapphire.  The  gold 
and  the  crystal  cannot  equal  it :  and  the  ex- 
change of  it  shall  not  be  for  jewels  of  fine 
gold.  No  mention  shall  be  made  of  coral, 
or  of  pearls :  for  the  price  of  wisdom  is  above 
rubies.  The  topaz  of  Ethiopia  shall  not 
equal  it,  neither  shall  it  be  valued  with  pure 
gold.  Whence  then  cometh  wisdom,  and 
where  is  the  place  of  understanding,  seeing 
it  is  hid  from  the  eyes  of  all  living,  and  kept 
close  from  the  fowls  of  the  air?  Destruc- 
tion and  death  say.  We  have  heard  the  fame 
thereof  with  our  ears.  God  understandeth 
the  way  thereof,  and  he  knoweth  the  place 
thereof;  for  he  looketh  to  the  ends  of  the 
earth,  and  seeth  under  the  whole  heaven, 
to  make  the  weight  for  the  winds;  and  he 
weigheth  the  waters  by  measure.  When 
he  made  a  decree  for  the  rain,  and  a  way  for 
the  lightning  of  the  thunder,  then  did  he  see 
it  and  declare  it;  he  prepared  it,  yea,  and 
searched  it  out.     And  unto  man  he  said, 


JOB  93 

Behold,  the  fear  of  the  Lord,  that  is  wis- 
dom ;  and  to  depart  from  evil  is  understand- 
ing" (28:12-28). 

But  the  resources  of  sudden  and  swift 
condensation  are  his  also :  '*  No  doubt  but  ye 
are  the  people  and  wisdom  shall  die  with 
you"  (12:2).  Nothing  can  be  added  to 
that;  its  victims  are  pilloried  forever.  The 
whole  sweep  of  God's  creative  energy  he 
curdles  disdainfully  in  a  sentence :  "  By  his 
spirit  he  hath  garnished  the  heavens;  his 
hand  hath  formed  the  crooked  serpent " 
(26:13).  His  own  wretchedness  lives  for- 
ever in  a  phrase :  "  I  am  a  brother  to  dra- 
gons, and  a  companion  to  owls  "  (30 :  29). 

Thomas  Hughes  says  of  Tom  Brown's 
new  fishing-rod :  "  It  had  play  enough  to 
throw  a  midge  tied  on  a  single  hair  against 
the  wind,  and  strength  enough  to  hold  a 
grampus."  The  words  are  true  of  Job's 
power  of  speech.  He  did  not  have  to  com- 
pel words  or  ideas  to  do  his  bidding.  They 
came  when  he  beckoned  and  gave  him  all 
that  they  had  of  play  and  power,  of  sweep 
and  challenge,  to  make  his  message  find 
lodgment  wherever  in  all  the  ages  men 
should  toil  up  from  half  knowledge  to  fuller 
knowledge  or  from  voicelessness  to  articu- 
lateness.     He  touches  nothing  that  does  not 


U  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

become  less  angular,  less  fragmentary,  less 
circumscribed.  He  thought  not  in  parts 
but  in  wholes,  not  in  hemispheres  but  in 
spheres,  not  in  terms  of  here  and  now  but  of 
everyzvhere  and  always.  He  muffles  the 
ache  of  the  actual  not  by  evasion  or  half 
statement  but  by  a  presentation  so  large,  so 
representative,  so  luminous  that  his  very 
Htany  has  become  both  guide  and  solace. 
"  The  greatest  thing  a  human  soul  ever 
does,"  says  Ruskin,  *'  is  to  see  something 
and  to  tell  v^^hat  it  saw.  To  see  clearly 
is  poetry,  prophecy,  and  reHgion  all  in 
one. 

Thus  if  Job  had  not  fought  his  way  out, 
if  he  had  remained  in  the  valley,  this  part 
of  the  book  would  still  be  a  bond  of  com- 
radeship in  trial,  because  to  be  articulate  is 
the  first  step  to  self-recovery.  He  would  at 
least  have  probed  the  problem;  he  would 
have  let  air  and  sunlight  in  even  if  he  him- 
self had  not  found  a  way  out.  The  spokes- 
man precedes  the  leader,  and  to  be  the 
spokesman  for  those  in  the  valley  is  at  least 
to  hint  the  victor  on  the  heights. 

But  Job  is  not  merely  the  spokesman  of 
those  in  the  valley;  he  is  the  spokesman  of 
those  who  climb  from  the  valley  to  the 
heights.     He  is  not  a  stationary  character. 


JOB  95 

This  differentiates  him  at  once  from  his 
four  friends.  They  make  their  exit  from 
the  same  plane  as  that  on  which  they  made 
their  entry.  There  is  thought  activity  in 
them  but  no  more  progress  than  that  made 
by  a  caged  squirrel  whirling  the  wheel  of  his 
little  prison.  But  Job  battles  his  way  up 
and  out.  The  world  quotes  him  not  only 
as  voice  for  the  voiceless  but  as  hope  for  the 
hopeless.  I  need  hardly  remind  you  that, 
in  spite  of  the  usual  classification,  Job  was 
never  a  sceptic.  He  had  faith  but  wanted 
knowledge.  His  friends  substituted  super- 
ficial knowledge  for  fundamental  faith  and 
thus  contributed  nothing  to  the  controversy 
except  to  intensify  Job's  sense  of  separa- 
tion from  God  and  to  make  us  realize 
how  urgently  the  times  called  for  a  new 
philosophy  of  human  suffering. 

The  comparison  of  Job  with  Prometheus 
is  not  fruitful.  Prometheus  took  the  side 
of  man  against  the  Olympians  whom  he 
knew  to  be  unmitigated  rascals.  There  is 
no  analogy  here.  In  the  case  of  CEdipus, 
with  whom  comparison  is  so  frequently 
made,  the  central  difference  is  that  the 
Greek  hero  knew  that  he  had  done  a  mon- 
strous thing  while  the  Hebrew  knew  that  he 
had  not.     This  difference  is  so  vital  that 


96  KEYKOTE  STUDIES 

comparison  is  only  contrast.  Little  more 
can  be  said  of  the  parallel  drawn  between 
Job  and  Tabu-utul-Bel,  the  so-called  Baby- 
lonian Job.'  The  latter  cries  out  in  his 
misery: 

The  diviner  has  not  improved  the  condition 

of  my  sickness ; 
The  duration  of  my  illness  the  seer  could  not 

state  ; 
The  god  helped  me  not,  my  hand  he  took  not ; 
The  goddess  pitied  me  not,  she  came  not  to 

my  side. 

But  a  conjurer  was  found  at  last  through 
whose  magic  the  sufferer  gained  a  triune 
blessing:  he  could  talk,  swallow,  and  spit: 

The  tongue,  which  had  stiffened  so  that  it 

could  not  be  raised — 
He  relieved  its  thickness,  so  its  words  could 

be  understood. 
The  gullet,  which  was  compressed,  stopped 

as  with  a  plug — 
He  healed  its  contraction,  it  worked  like  a  flute. 
My  spittle  which  was  stopped  so  that  it  was 

not  secreted — 
He  removed  its  fetter,  he  opened  its  lock. 

*  See  George  A.  Barton's  "  Archaeology  and  the 
Bible"  (1917),  pp.  392-396;  "Proceedings  of  the 
Society  of  Biblical  Archaeology,"  X,  478;  and  Sir 
Henry  C.  Rawlinson's  "  Cuneiform  Inscriptions,"  IV, 
60. 


JOB  97 

Equally  unfruitful  will  be  the  attempt  to 
weigh  nicely  the  arguments  of  the  five  con- 
testants as  arguments,  to  appraise  them  in 
terms  of  logical  reply  and  counter-reply,  to 
grade  their  relevancy  or  irrelevancy  to  what 
the  preceding  speaker  has  said.  Argu- 
mentation in  our  sense,  argumentation  as  a 
Burke  or  a  Marshall  or  a  Webster  employed 
it,  was  unknown  to  the  Hebrew.  His  lan- 
guage was  not  adapted  to  it.  Connectives 
and  particles,  those  indicia  of  voice  and  ges- 
ture on  which  all  orderly  and  interrelated 
argumentation  is  dependent,  are  lacking  in 
Hebrew  though  they  swarm  in  Greek.  The 
speeches  of  Job  and  his  friends  are  not  argu- 
ments; they  are  monologues,  connected 
sometimes  at  the  beginning  with  what  the 
preceding  speaker  has  said,  but  soaring  free 
at  the  first  opportunity  and  becoming  more 
and  more  unrelated  and  self-originated  as 
each  speaker  dips  deeper  into  his  own  view- 
point. 

The  superior  interest  in  the  content  of 
Job's  speeches  does  not  lie,  then,  in  their 
argument  as  such.  It  lies  in  their  tri- 
umphant advance  from  seeming  despair  to 
faith  and  hope.  A  great  nature,  shaken  to 
its  center,  is  finding  itself,  not  through  the 
counsel  of  friends  but  in  spite  of  such  coun- 


98  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

sel.  The  speeches  of  these  friends  are  but 
so  many  wheels  revolving  on  the  same  axle. 
But  Job's  speeches  are  not  circular  but  pro- 
gressive. They  form  a  ladder  with  firm-set 
and  luminous  rounds.  To  find  these  rounds, 
to  catch  the  radiance  of  the  pinnacle  mo- 
ments that  light  the  way  up,  to  mount  with 
Job  from  strength  to  strength,  this  is  the 
offering  of  these  chapters;  this  it  is  that  has 
given  them  their  immortality  'of  service, 
their  energy-releasing  influence  upon  their 
readers.  Perhaps  no  two  of  us  would  agree 
in  our  count  of  these  moments,  but  none  of 
us,  I  am  sure,  would  omit  such  sayings  as: 

"  Though  he  slay  me,  yet  will  I  trust  in 
him"   (13:15). 

"  My  witness  is  in  heaven  and  my  record 
is  on  high"  (16:19). 

"  I  know  that  my  redeemer  liveth " 
(19:25). 

"  When  he  hath  tried  me,  I  shall  come 
forth  as  gold"  (23:10). 

Each  of  these  is  a  victory  in  itself  and  the 
herald  of  a  greater  victory  yet  to  be;  each 
marks  an  altitude  won  and  not  lost  again; 
each  is  a  mile-stone  for  nations  as  well  as  for 
individuals;  each  shows  the  essential  one- 
ness of  heroes  in  the  Old  Testament  and 
those  in  the  New;  each  shows  the  wisdom  of 


JOB  99 

God  in  making  probation  the  criterion  of  the 
soul's  worth,  and  the  abiUty  of  the  soul  amid 
all  menaces  to  meet  the  test.  Browning 
might  well  have  had  Job  in  mind  when  he 
wrote : 

No,  when  the  fight  begins  within  himself, 
A  man's  worth  something.     God  stoops  o'er 

his  head, 
Satan  looks  up  between  his  feet — both  tug — 
He's  left,  himself,  i'  the  middle:  the  soul 

wakes 
And  grows.     Prolong  that  battle  through  his 

Hfe! 
Never  leave  growing  till  the  life  to  come ! 

One  might  indeed  take  these  four  sayings 
of  Job  and  by  relating  them  one  to  the  other 
make  of  them  a  sort  of  system  of  faith 
triumphant.  I  shall  not  attempt  it  but  I 
wish  you  to  notice  that  when  Job  utters  the 
first  of  these  sayings  the  book  passes  at  once 
from  the  category  of  the  Greek  drama,  gov- 
erned by  remorseless  fatality,  to  the  plane 
of  the  Shakespearean  drama,  where  per- 
sonal will  and  faith  and  hope  have  a  chance 
to  win  out  over  an  imposed  and  implacable 
doom.  But  more  significant  still  is  Job's 
last  quoted  saying,  "  When  he  hath  tried 
me,  I  shall  come  forth  as  gold."  Here  he 
rises  level  to  the  height  of  the  first  two 


100  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

chapters.  He  discovers  and  vindicates  with- 
out God's  interposition  the  very  principle 
that  was  at  issue  in  his  trial.  Is  suffering 
punitive  or  is  it  remedial?  Or,  if  we  think 
it  punitive  at  first,  may  we  so  accept  and 
assimilate  it  as  to  make  it  remedial?  Satan, 
who,  as  the  world's  prosecuting  attorney, 
ought  to  have  known  better,  believed  that 
Job  would  interpret  his  affliction  as  un- 
merited and  intolerable  punishment;  that 
he  would  not  bear  up  under  it;  that,  when 
he  found  the  traditional  contract  between 
property  and  piety  dissolved,  he  would  blas- 
pheme and  disintegrate :  "  Doth  Job  fear 
God  for  naught?  Hast  thou  not  made  an 
hedge  about  him,  and  about  his  house,  and 
about  all  that  he  hath  on  every  side?  Thou 
hast  blessed  the  work  of  his  hands,  and  his 
substance  is  increased  in  the  land.  But  put 
forth  thine  hand  now,  and  touch  all  that  he 
hath,  and  he  will  curse  thee  to  thy  face  '* 
(1:9-11). 

But  Job  has  reached  an  altitude  at  which 
blasphemy  is  forever  impossible.  His  char- 
acter instead  of  disintegrating  crystallizes. 
When  he  identifies  his  own  trial  with  the 
familiar  process  of  the  refiner  refining  his 
gold,  his  feet  are  upon  a  rock.  He  has  dis- 
covered the  spiritual  law  of  gravitation  and 


JOB  101 

has  submitted  himself  to  it.  In  exact  pro- 
portion as  his  affliction  increases  he  knows 
that  there  will  be  an  increase  of  gold  and  a 
decrease  of  dross.  Had  he  merely  remained 
silent  in  his  trial,  had  he  merely  not  cursed 
God,  Satan  would  have  lost  but  God  and 
humanity  would  not  have  won.  When, 
however,  he  does  not  curse  but  recognizes 
remedial  discipline  in  his  chastisement,  he 
not  only  vanquishes  Satan  but  vindicates 
God  and  the  human  soul.  He  did  more. 
He  made  that  ash  heap  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment prophesy  the  Cross  in  the  New. 

IV 
The  third  part  of  the  book  of  Job,  that 
embracing  chapters  38-42,  has  been  more 
diversely  interpreted  than  any  other  equal 
section  of  the  Old  Testament.  It  has  been 
said  that  it  is  the  addition  of  a  later  and  less 
skilful  hand,  that  it  is  irrelevant  to  the  main 
issue,  and  thus  not  a  worthy  or  fitting  con- 
clusion to  what  has  gone  before.  An  un- 
named writer  in  The  Unpopular  Reviezv  ^  sum- 
marizes as  follows :  "  The  friends  of  Job 
argued  that  since  he  was  unfortunate  he 
must  be  wicked.  Job  knew  better.  But  the 
author  of  the  book  had  no  solution.  His 
'See  issue  for  January-March,  1917. 


102  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

Jehovah,  who  should  dehver  the  conclusion 
of  the  whole  matter  and  close  the  discussion, 
delivers  magnificent  poetry,  but  throws  no 
light  on  the  subject,  save  the  glare  of  his 
indignation  that  anything  so  insignificant  as 
man  should  have  any  opinion  about  it.  Job 
was  silenced  but  not  answered.  The  opin- 
ion of  the  author  would  appear  to  be  that 
the  problem  was  humanly  insoluble." 

Before  considering  this  facile  indictment 
more  in  detail,  let  us  read  and  reread  the 
concluding  part  of  Joh.  The  patriarch  is 
rebuked  not  for  the  things  that  he  had  said 
wisely  but  for  the  things  that  he  had  said 
unwisely.  For  the  wise  and  brave  things 
that  he  had  said  he  receives  the  Lord's  ex- 
press commendation.  ''  For  ye,"  says  the 
Lord,  referring  to  Job's  friends,  "have  not 
spoken  of  me  the  thing  that  is  right,  as  my 
servant  Job  hath  "  (42 :  7).  But  a  child  can 
see  that  Job  had  mingled  mere  glitter  with 
his  gold,  that  he  had  said  many  things  that 
in  a  more  tranquil  mood  he  would  regret 
and  did  regret:  "Therefore  have  I  uttered 
that  I  understood  not;  things  too  wonder- 
ful for  me,  which  I  knew  not "  (42:  3).  If 
the  author  of  the  book  had  represented  God 
as  approving  all  that  Job  had  said,  he  would 
have  compromised  the  character  of  the  In- 


JOB  ^  103 

finite  and  made  the  conclusion  of  the  book 
a  jarring  anticlimax.  Think  what  strange 
inferences  you  would  have  to  draw  as  to 
the  character  of  God  if  you  were  told  that 
He  commended  every  complaint,  every  pro- 
test, every  half  truth  that  Job  uttered. 
What  He  does  approve  and  bountifully  re- 
ward is  Job's  conduct,  his  vindication  of 
suffering  as  discipline,  his  victorious  nega- 
tion of  Satan's  challenge  to  human  nature. 
Conduct,  not  talk,  was  the  issue,  and  God's 
reproof  of  Job's  "  words  without  wisdom  " 
was  only  to  clear  the  way  for  a  more  unre- 
served commendation  of  the  words  and 
spiritual  growth  that  merited  no  reproof. 

But  God  passes  at  once  from  a  momentary 
consideration  of  Job's  limitations  to  a  re- 
view of  the  majesty  and  mystery  of  nature. 
Are  these  chapters  (38-41)  irrelevant? 
Only  to  those  who  have  formed  an  obdurate 
preconception  of  how  the  book  ought  to  end 
and  refuse  to  have  their  preconception 
modified.  Nowhere  else  in  the  Bible  will 
you  find  so  detailed  a  panorama  of  nature's 
ways  or  so  eloquent  a  portrayal  of  her  min- 
istry for  men.  It  is  an  inspired  commentary 
on  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis,  Genesis  sums 
up  the  orderly  and  sequent  emergence  of 
nature  at  the  command  of  God  while  these 


104  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

chapters  show  the  wisdom  and  greatness  of 
God  not  in  creating  but  in  preserving  and 
sustaining  the  work  of  His  hand.  There  is 
hardly  an  object  of  nature  or  a  natural 
phenomenon  of  impressive  import  that  is 
not  summoned  to  the  pageant  that  is  made 
to  defile  before  us.  The  purpose  of  it  all  is 
very  plain.  It  is  to  remind  Job  that  in  all 
of  his  struggle  he  had  missed  a  source  of 
reassurance  on  which  he  might  have  drawn 
unfaiUngly.  The  very  core  of  Job's  afflic- 
tion had  been  that  he  could  not  see  God, 
could  not  hear  His  voice,  could  not  even 
find  His  footprints  in  the  lone  path  along 
which  he  was  journeying.  He  had  talked 
much  of  nature's  mysteries,  had  even  recog- 
nized in  them  a  certain  law  and  order,  but 
instead  of  seeing  a  beneficent  God  in  them 
he  saw  only  an  absentee  landlord  who  dis- 
dained to  associate  with  his  servants  or 
tenants.  His  loneliness,  his  sense  of  utter 
isolation  from  the  power  that  orbed  above 
him  or  spread  its  glories  around  him,  is  well 
voiced  by  Tennyson's  outcast,  who  also  felt 
himself  "  exiled  from  eternal  God  " : 

A  spot  of  dull  stagnation,  without  light 
Or  power  of  movement,  seem'd  my  soul, 

'Mid  onward-sloping  motions  infinite 
Making  for  one  sure  goal. 


JOB  105 

A  still  salt  pool,  lock'd  in  with  bars  of  sand, 
Left  on  the  shore ;  that  hears  all  night 

The  plunging  seas  draw  backward  from  the 
land 
Their  moon-led  waters  white. 

A  star  that  with  the  choral  starry  dance 
Join'd  not,  but  stood,  and  standing  saw 

The  hollow  orb  of  moving  Circumstance 
Roird  round  by  one  fix'd  law. 

Yet  all  the  while  nature  was  calling  to 
them  both,  was  bidding  them  see  not  only 
law  but  providence  and  divine  comradeship 
in  all  her  manifestations.  There  is  not  a 
great  poet  in  all  literature,  so  far  as  I  know, 
who  has  not  found  in  nature  at  least  a  par- 
tial antidote  to  the  sense  of  being  left  out 
and  left  behind  from  which  Job  was  suffer- 
ing. Even  Byron  claims  and  claims  justly 
the  right  to  stand  among  those  who  find  in 
nature  what  Job  did  not  find : 

Some  kinder  casuists  are  pleased  to  say. 
In  nameless  print,  that  I  have  no  devotion  ; 
But  set  those  persons  down  with  me  to  pray. 
And  you  shall  see  who  has  the  properest 

notion 
Of  getting  into  heaven  the  shortest  way ; 
My  altars  are  the  mountains  and  the  ocean, 


106  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

Earth,  air,  stars, — all  spring  from  the  great 

Whole, 
Who  hath  produced,  and  will  receive  the  soul. 

Philosophy,  says  Henri  Bergson,  will 
never  become  a  serious  matter  till  it  does 
away  with  dogmatic  systems  and  arrives  at 
''  the  sense  of  not  being  alone  in  the  world.'* 
The  Ancient  Mariner  lost  God  when  he  lost 
fellowship  with  nature.  He  found  God 
when  fellowship  with  nature  was  restored 
through  love  and  sympathy. 

But  it  is  not  only  to  the  comradeship  of 
nature  that  God  calls  Job;  it  is  to  the  mys- 
tery of  nature,  a  mystery  so  vast  and  en- 
compassing that  it  offers  healing  for  all 
minor  mysteries.  Job  could  not  understand, 
could  not  find  the  mathematical  formula  for, 
God's  dealings  with  him.  These  chapters 
ask  him  if  he  understands  or  can  give  the 
mathematical  formula  for  anything  in  na- 
ture. Job  asked  for  bread  and  got  not  a 
loaf  but  a  bakery;  he  asked  for  water  and 
got  not  a  drop  but  a  surf  bath ;  he  asked  for 
light  and  got  not  a  taper  but  the  full  glare 
of  the  sun.  "  Study  large  maps,"  Lord 
Salisbury  once  urged;  by  demanding  more 
than  the  section  map,  they  yield  more.  The 
larger  view  is  always  the  more  sanative. 
The  pool  may  rot  but  not  the  sea.     It's 


JOB  107 

easier  to  swim  in  the  ocean  and  there's  less 
danger  of  sinking  than  in  the  bounded  com- 
pass of  the  lake. 

The  ministry  of  nature  is  taught  in  many 
passages  in  the  Bible  but  it  is  never  so 
massed  and  summarized  as  here.  Jonah, 
sulking  and  whining  because  he  could  not 
understand  God's  treatment  of  him,  was 
pointed  not  to  the  entire  book  of  nature  but 
to  a  mere  foot-note,  a  gourd:  "Then  said 
the  Lord,  Thou  hast  had  pity  on  the  gourd, 
for  the  which  thou  hast  not  labored,  neither 
madest  it  grow;  which  came  up  in  a  night, 
and  perished  in  a  night.  And  should  not  I 
spare  Nineveh,  that  great  city,  wherein  are 
more  than  sixscore  thousand  persons  that 
cannot  discern  between  their  right  hand  and 
their  left  hand;  and  also  much  cattle?  "  As 
Christ  found  it  necessary  to  reenforce  the 
lesson  taught  in  the  preceding  sections  of 
Job,  that  affliction  is  not  penalty,  so  in  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  He  reenforces  the 
lesson  taught  in  the  last  section,  that  a  con- 
sideration of  nature's  ways  is  an  antidote  to 
worry  and  a  restorer  of  faith :  "  Behold  the 
fowls  of  the  air;  for  they  sow  not,  neither 
do  they  reap,  nor  gather  into  barns;  yet 
your  heavenly  Father  feedeth  them.  Are 
ye  not  much  better  than  they?     Which  of 


108  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

you  by  taking  thought  can  add  one  cubit 
unto  his  stature?  And  why  take  ye  thought 
for  raiment?  Consider  the  UHes  of  the 
field,  how  they  grow;  they  toil  not,  neither 
do  they  spin.  And  yet  I  say  unto  you  that 
even  Solomon  in  all  his  glory  was  not  ar- 
rayed like  one  of  these.  Wherefore,  if  God 
so  clothe  the  grass  of  the  field,  which  to-day 
is,  and  to-morrow  is  cast  into  the  oven,  shall 
he  not  much  more  clothe  you,  O  ye  of  little 
faith?" 

Let  us  return  now  to  the  charge  of  inde- 
cisiveness:  "  The  author  of  the  book  had  no 
solution.  His  Jehovah,  who  should  deliver 
the  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter,"  etc. 
The  critic  seems  to  have  reasoned  thus: 
"  Solutions  ought  to  come  last.  But  I  find 
no  solution  in  God's  speech  to  Job.  There- 
fore the  book  ends  loosely  and  indecisively." 
It  hardly  needs  to  be  said  that  the  problem 
is  stated  and  solved  before  God  reappears. 
In  chapters  1-2  Satan  wagers  that  Job  will 
see  in  suffering  a  whip ;  God  knows  that  he 
will  see  in  it  a  ladder;  in  chapters  3-3Y  Job 
discerns  the  ladder  and  treads  painfully  but 
victoriously  its  ascending  rounds.  As  I 
pass  to  the  concluding  chapters  of  the  book 
there  is  no  feeling  of  suspense  as  in  a  puzzle 
yet  unsolved.     There  is   eager  interest  to 


JOB  109 

know  if,  when  judgment  has  been  pro- 
nounced, God  will  reveal  a  way  by  which 
the  sorely  tried  patriarch  might  have 
reached  his  goal  with  equal  discipline  but 
through  less  darkness.  There  is  such  a  way 
and  God  reveals  it.  The  "  magnificent 
poetry  "  of  the  Lord's  address  to  Job  is  not 
meant  as  a  solution  of  what  had  already 
been  solved  but  as  a  reminder  that  all  who 
suffer  from  a  sense  of  God's  remoteness  and 
indifference  may  find  in  the  greatness  and 
harmony  of  nature  the  balm  of  a  healing 
ministry,  the  assurance  that  in  spite  of  mys- 
tery upon  mystery — nay,  because  of  it — 

God's  in  his  heaven — 
All's  right  with  the  world ! 

If  the  critic  insists  on  irrelevancy  here,  he 
must  charge  an  equal  irrelevancy  when  the 
Master  bade  His  perplexed  and  anxious  fol- 
lowers to  behold  the  fowls  of  the  air  and  to 
consider  the  lilies  of  the  field. 

God,  man,  nature,  these  are  the  themes 
of  Job,  the  greatest  themes  then  and  the 
greatest  now.  They  are  presented  not  as 
the  theologian  or  the  psychologist  or  the 
scientist  would  present  them,  for  the  appeal 
is  not  to  the  analytic  intellect  of  man  but 
to  his  suffering  spirit  that  moves  as  in  a 


110  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

world  not  realized,  that  finds  mystery  above, 
mystery  within,  and  mystery  round  about. 
The  central  problem  of  the  book  is  not, 
Why  do  the  righteous  suffer?  but  How  may 
all  suffering,  yours  and  mine  and  Job's,  be 
transmuted  into  the  larger  life  here,  and 
become  the  pledge  and  herald  of  the  un- 
ending life  hereafter? 


HOSEA 

I 

"  TT  OFTEN  fancy,"  said  Renan,  "  that  I 
I  have  at  the  bottom  of  my  heart  a  city 
-*-  of  Is,  with  its  bells  calling  to  prayer 
a  recalcitrant  congregation."  Is,  you  re- 
member, is  the  name  of  a  submerged 
legendary  city  near  the  coast  of  Brittany, 
and  the  tradition  is  that  during  the  roar 
of  a  storm  the  bells  of  the  sunken  city  can 
still  be  heard.  The  figure  is  a  fitting  symbol 
not  so  much  of  the  character  of  an  indi- 
vidual as  of  the  enduring  service  rendered 
by  the  prophets  of  the  Old  Testament.  In 
periods  of  calm  their  voice  is  silent,  but  in 
every  crisis  of  Hebrew  history,  whether  the 
danger  was  from  within  or  without,  the 
prophets  sounded  the  trumpet  call  to  re- 
form and  re-dedication.  No  other  people 
was  ever  so  blessed  in  leaders  of  wide 
horizon,  who  knew  the  right  and  knowing 
dared  maintain.  No  other  leaders  ever 
III 


112  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

spoke  in  tones  that  rang  clearer  or  carried 
farther.  These  ancient  oracles,  says  J.  H. 
Gardner/  have  ''  a  rugged  grandeur  and 
elevation  which  set  them  apart  as  almost  the 
highest  peak  in  the  v^^ritings  of  men." 

As  interesting  as  their  work  is,  however, 
as  literature,  it  is  far  more  interesting  in 
the  content  of  its  message.  The  more  I 
read  them  the  more  I  am  convinced  that,  in 
spite  of  individual  differences,  one  big 
thought  gives  unity  to  them  all.  Some,  it 
is  true,  prophesied  to  the  Northern  King- 
dom, others  to  the  Southern;  some  were 
educated,  others  were  almost  untutored; 
some  spoke  before  the  long  captivity  in 
Babylon,  others  during  it,  and  still  others 
after  it.  But  though  different  as  the  waves 
they  were  one  as  the  sea.  And  in  their 
unity^  in  their  convergence  to  a  central  con- 
viction, one  finds  a  better  starting  point  for 
their  study  than  in  the  most  elaborate  sum- 
mary of  their  differences. 

I  know  of  no  single  word  that  expresses 
this  common  denominator  of  the  prophets, 
but  an  illustration  will  help.  Did  you  ever 
see  the  Kentucky  coffee  tree?  It  still  grows 
in  the  Mississippi  Valley  but  it  is  threatened 
with  extinction  and  for  a  very  peculiar 
*"The  Bible  as  English  Literature"  (1906),  p.  215. 


HOSEA  113 

reason.  It  has  a  pod  like  that  of  the  locust 
tree  but  the  beans  inside  the  pod  have  a 
shell  so  hard  that  the  living  germ  in  each 
bean  finds  increasing  difficulty  in  getting 
out.  If  the  hardening  process  continues,  as 
seems  likely,  the  Kentucky  coffee  tree  will 
go  the  way  that  all  chickens  would  go  if  the 
little  ones  could  not  peck  their  way  out. 

This  hardening  of  the  shell  at  the  expense 
of  the  living  germ  within  has  played  a  much 
wider  role  in  human  history  than  in  nat- 
ural history.  And  the  Hebrew  prophets, 
above  all  men  that  ever  lived,  have  stood 
resolutely  and  unchangingly  for  the  living 
principle  within,  and  have  battled  even  to 
the  death  against  every  encroachment  of 
shell  or  husk.  Whether  the  question  was 
religious  or  social  or  political,  whether  it 
concerned  the  one  or  the  many,  these  are 
the  elect  men  in  the  Old  Testament  who 
championed  the  cause  of  truth  against  the 
changing  forms  of  truth,  who  recognized 
with  unerring  vision  the  abiding  worth  of 
the  inside  and  the  comparative  worthless- 
ness  of  the  outside,  who  in  every  obligation 
looked  for  "  the  spirit  that  maketh  alive  " 
and  fought  the  menace  of  "  the  letter  that 
killeth." 

It  is  a  strange  twist  in  human  nature  that 


114'  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

predisposes  it  to  substitute  the  means  for 
the  end,  to  exalt  the  insignia  above  the 
thing  signified,  to  flaunt  the  symbol  rather 
than  to  practise  the  thing  symbolized.  It  is 
the  same  predisposition  to  the  external  that 
confuses  character  with  reputation,  senti- 
ment with  sentimentality,  the  statesman  with 
the  politician,  the  poet  with  the  versifier. 
When  Christ  said,  "  The  sabbath  was  made 
for  man  and  not  man  for  the  sabbath,"  He 
summed  up  incomparably  what  the  prophets 
had  resolutely  stood  for.  When  He  con- 
trasted the  *'  tithe  of  mint  and  anise  and 
cummin "  with  "  judgment,  mercy,  and 
faith,"  He  was  expanding  the  same  theme. 
When  the  President  of  the  United  States 
declared  on  that  memorable  second  of 
April,  that  "  the  same  standards  of  conduct 
and  responsibility  for  wrong  done  shall  be 
observed  among  nations  and  their  govern- 
ments that  are  observed  among  the  indi- 
vidual citizens  of  civilized  states,"  he  spoke 
in  the  very  tones  of  the  Hebrew  prophets. 
There  is,  there  can  be,  no  surer  test  of  a 
great  thinker  than  the  ability  to  discern  as 
by  intuition  between  the  shell  and  what  the 
shell  was  meant  to  conserve;  and  there  is, 
there  can  be,  no  surer  measure  of  heroism 
than  the  courage  to  take  the  side  of  the 


HOSEA  115 

inward  and  spiritual  though  all  the  world 
proclaim  that  the  outward  and  visible  is 
better. 

It  is  just  this  blended  insight  and  fearless- 
ness that  gave  the  Hebrew  prophets  their 
sovereignty  over  their  own  nation  and  has 
made  all  other  nations  their  debtors.  Read 
them  again ;  mark  the  passages  that,  rising 
above  the  limitations  of  time  and  place, 
suggest  how  we  of  a  more  complex  age  may 
resist  the  encroachments  of  the  outer  upon 
the  inner.  If  you  can  assimilate  from  any 
prophet  or  from  any  passage  a  new  insight 
into  the  permanency  of  principle  and  the 
transiency  of  ceremony  you  will  have  gained 
in  mental  and  moral  force  along  the  whole 
battle  line  of  truth  and  error. 

II 
You  will  find  no  difficulty  in  selecting 
from  Hosea  the  great  passage  that  pro- 
claims his  stand  in  the  war  between  the 
kernel  and  the  shell :  "  For  I  desired  mercy, 
and  not  sacrifice;  and  the  knowledge  of 
God  rather  than  burnt  offerings"  (6:6). 
You  will  search  the  Old  Testament  in  vain 
for  a  clearer  or  more  resonant  statement  of 
the  problem  that  seemed  always  at  issue. 
The  national  temptation  was  to  stress  ritual- 


116  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

ism  at  the  expense  of  the  Hfe-giving  virtues 
of  which  rituahsm  was  but  the  outer  form. 
It  is  as  if  the  nation  had  said,  "  We  care  not 
so  much  for  the  water  that  we  drink  as  for 
the  artistry  of  the  cup  that  contains  it." 
Put  thus  the  error  seems  very  palpable,  but 
there  is  not  one  of  us  who  does  not  need 
hourly  the  eloquent  reminder  of  the  prophet.. 
There  is  not  one  of  us  who  is  not  function- 
ing below  his  maximum  because  he  is  seek- 
ing for  strength  in  externalities  that  have 
none.  There  is  not  one  of  us  who  does  not 
at  times  suffer  from  a  vague  depression  be- 
cause, though  regular  in  our  church  duties, 
we  are  all  the  time  living  at  the  circumfer- 
ence, not  at  the  center.  There  are  writers 
to-day  who  pit  themselves  against  the  elder 
masters  and  ask  in  all  honesty :  ''Are  not  my 
rimes  and  stanzas  as  regular  as  theirs? 
Are  not  my  stories  more  artistically  con- 
structed?" Yes,  but  what  have  you  put 
into  them?  Your  "sacrifice"  is  patent 
enough;  your  "burnt-offerings"  smoke 
from  every  page.  But  weigh  the  masters 
once  more,  not  in  the  scales  of  manner  or 
mannerism  but  of  the  urge  and  sweep  of 
their  message.  Do  not  absorb  what  they 
say  as  the  sponge  absorbs  water  but  as  the 
leaf   absorbs   the   rain.     Do   for  your   age 


HOSEA  117 

what  they  did  for  theirs.  Relate  your 
message  to  a  present  need  as  they  related 
theirs  to  a  past  need  that  was  then  present. 

"  Mercy  and  the  knowledge  of  God, 
these,"  says  Hosea,  **  are  central."  When- 
ever sacrifices  cease  to  quicken  the  springs 
of  mercy,  whenever  they  do  not  relate  them- 
selves consciously  and  actively  to  the  heart 
within,  whenever  they  fail  to  hint  of  a  God 
who  is  merciful  and  who  will  in  His  own 
time  by  a  supreme  sacrifice  show  His  in- 
finite mercy, — they  are  worse  than  useless. 
And  whenever  burnt-offerings  are  counted 
merely  by  their  number,  whenever  they  do 
not  suggest  sin  purged  away,  whenever  they 
fail  to  lead  the  mind  on  to  the  knowledge  of 
a  great  High  Priest  who  will  yet  take  away 
the  sins  of  the  world, — they  become  an  end 
in  themselves  and  defeat  the  end  for  which 
they  were  ordained.  But  more  than  this, 
these  great  words  of  Hosea  connote  not 
merely  the  relation  between  mercy  and 
sacrifice  on  the  one  hand  and  knowledge  of 
God  and  burnt-offerings  on  the  other.  They 
connote  the  whole  realm  oi  duty  that  finds 
expression  through  any  type  or  form, 
through  any  ceremony  or  symbol. 

That  I  do  not  overstate  the  meaning  of 
Hosea's    words    let    me    remind    you    that 


118  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

Christ  on  two  occasions  in  His  life  was  re- 
proached by  the  Pharisees  for  doing  or  per- 
mitting what  they  considered  unlawful. 
The  questions  at  issue  had  nothing  to  do 
with  sacrifices  or  burnt-offerings;  but  in  the 
Master's  mind  the  underlying  principle  was 
exactly  that  which  Hosea  had  stressed,  and 
in  both  cases  He  quotes  Hosea  and  urges 
His  critics  to  seek  the  larger  meaning  of  the 
prophet's  words.  ''And  it  came  to  pass,  as 
Jesus  sat  at  meat  in  the  house,  behold,  many 
publicans  and  sinners  came  and  sat  down 
with  him  and  his  disciples.  And  when  the 
Pharisees  saw  it,  they  said  unto  his  dis- 
ciples, Why  eateth  your  master  with  pub- 
licans and  sinners?"  (Matthew  9:10-11). 
Does  Jesus  explain  to  them  that  the  ques- 
tion is  merely  the  old  one  of  the  outside 
versus  the  inside,  of  the  shell  versus  the 
kernel?  No,  His  reply  is:  "Go  ye  and 
Dearn  what  that  meaneth,  I  will  have  mercy 
and  not  sacrifice." 

A  little  later  His  disciples  began  to  pluck 
and  eat  corn  on  the  Sabbath  day.  "  But 
when  the  Pharisees  saw  it,  they  said  unto 
him.  Behold,  thy  disciples  do  that  which  is 
not  lawful  to  do  upon  the  Sabbath  day  " 
(Matthew  12 :  2).  There  would  seem  at  first 
glance  to  be  little  relation  between  eating 


HOSEA  119 

corn  and  offering  sacrifices.  Nearly  eight 
centuries  had  passed  and  the  day  of  sacri- 
fices and  burnt-offerings  was  drawing  to  its 
close.  But  the  relation  between  form  and 
substance,  between  letter  and  spirit,  had  not 
changed,  nor  will  it  ever  change.  All  this 
is  summed  again  in  Christ's  reply :  "  If  ye 
had  known  what  this  meaneth,  I  will  have 
mercy  and  not  sacrifice,  ye  would  not  have 
condemned  the  guiltless.''  I  can  imagine 
no  higher  tribute  to  Hosea's  words  than 
that  Christ  should  quote  them  twice  and 
thus  standardize  them  as  the  most  compact 
statement  of  the  great  principle  that  all  the 
prophets  had  proclaimed. 

Ill 

But  every  prophet  in  the  Old  Testament 
has  his  distinctive  message  apart  from  the 
general  message  of  which  he  is  only  a  co- 
deliverer.  We  have  spoken  of  the  chorus 
chanted  in  varying  tones  by  all  the  prophets 
whether  major  or  minor,  whether  of  Israel 
or  Judah.  If  Hosea's  voice  had  greater 
carrying  power  than  the  others,  the  refrain 
itself  was  the  same.  Each  prophet,  how- 
ever, has  a  distinguishing  note,  a  spiritual 
differential,  that  marks  him  off  from  all 
others.     In  Hosea's  case  the  differential  not 


120  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

only  gives  color  and  form  to  his  entire 
message  but  has  exerted  an  influence  on 
Bible  thought  out  of  all  proportion  to  the 
number  of  pages  that  contain  it.  The  book 
itself  has  but  fourteen  short  chapters,  the 
last  eleven  prophesying  the  dechne  of  Israel, 
the  first  three  narrating  the  domestic 
tragedy  that  made  Hosea  and  his  message 
unique  in  all  literature. 

That  Hosea  is  to-day  the  most  neglected 
and  the  most  obscure  of  the  prophets  is 
due,  I  think,  chiefly  to  one  cause :  a  curious 
use  of  the  divine  imperative.  This  is  a 
Hebrew  characteristic  but  it  culminates  in 
Hosea.  Suppose  you  had  sailed  on  the  ill- 
fated  Titanic  and,  escaping  with  your  life, 
had  realized  in  later  years  that  the  experi- 
ence had  broadened  and  enriched  you,  that, 
like  Job,  you  had  come  out  of  the  depths  to 
dwell  on  the  heights.  You  would  tell  it  in 
the  order  of  its  occurrence.  You  would 
begin :  "I  embarked  on  a  ship  that  I  thought 
unsinkable."  Not  so  Hosea.  So  clearly 
would  he  see  in  retrospect  God's  hand  in  all 
that  had  befallen  him  that  he  would  inter- 
pret it  and  narrate  it  as  the  fulfillment  of  a 
divine  command.  He  would  have  begun: 
"  The  Lord  said  to  Hosea,  Get  thee  into  a 
ship  that  shall  surely  sink."     Every  detail 


HOSEA  121 

which  he  did  not  then  foresee  but  which  on 
reflection  he  found  beneficent  in  result  he 
would  have  translated  not  in  ordinary  past 
tenses,  as  you  or  I  would  have  done,  but  in 
the  urgent  tones  of  the  imperative  mood, 
God  Himself  commanding. 

**  Surely  there  are  in  every  man*s  life," 
says  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  "  certain  rubs, 
doublings,  and  wrenches,  which  pass  a  while 
under  the  effects  of  chance;  but  at  the  last, 
well  examined,  prove  the  mere  hand  of 
God."  Hosea  had  his  full  share  of  "  rubs, 
doublings,  and  wrenches  "  but  his  rooted 
conviction  was  that  God  had  planned  his 
life  as  a  whole  and  preordained  every  event 
in  accordance  with  wisdom  and  mercy.  He 
does  not  say,  therefore,  "  I  did  this,"  but 
"  God  commanded  me  to  do  this."  The 
goal  becomes  the  starting  place.  He  counts 
his  mile-stones  accurately  but,  as  we  should 
say,  backward. 

Even  this  would  not  greatly  perplex  us 
provided  the  things  done  were  not  in  them- 
selves wrong.  But  suppose  that  Jean  Val- 
jean,  the  hero  in  Les  Miserahles,  who  cer- 
tainly passed  to  moral  heroism  ?7fa  evil  deeds, 
had  said  in  later  years :  "  The  Lord  com- 
manded me  to  steal  a  loaf  of  bread,  to  take 
the  silver  plate  from  the  Bishop,  to  snatch 


122  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

two  francs  from  a  child."  We  should  have 
thought  him  a  man  of  strangely  inverted 
moral  sense  until  we  were  told  that  this 
was  only  his  way  of  saying  that,  looking 
back  over  his  life,  he  believed  that  a  divinity 
had  shaped  his  ends,  rough-hew  them  how 
he  would.  Autobiography  thus  written  be- 
comes a  series  of  divine  commands,  the 
author  believing  that  God's  permission  is  in 
effect  an  order. 

Turn  now  to  the  second  and  third  verses 
of  Hosea:  "The  beginning  of  the  word  of 
the  Lord  by  Hosea.  And  the  Lord  said  to 
Hosea,  Go,  take  unto  thee  a  wife  of  whore- 
doms and  children  of  whoredoms:  for  the 
land  hath  committed  great  whoredom,  de- 
parting from  the  Lord.  So  he  went  and 
took  Gomer  the  daughter  of  Diblaim;  which 
conceived  and  bare  him  a  son."  Compare 
the  deterrent  nature  of  this  Introduction 
with  the  matchless  Introductions  to  Genesis, 
Esther,  and  Job.  But  if  translated  so  as  to 
make  clear  the  thought  that  Gomer's  un- 
faithfulness came  later  and  was  only  in 
retrospect  linked  with  a  command  of  God, 
the  Introduction  will  take  its  place  with  any 
that  have  gone  before.  It  not  only  intro- 
duces what  is  to  follow  but  stamps  Hosea 
as  a  man  whose  faith  in  God's  leading  made 


HOSE  A  123 

tragedy   in   the  traditional   sense  impossi- 
ble. 

Turn  also  to  the  second  crisis  in  Hosea's 
life.  Gomer  had  left  him  and  sold  herself 
as  a  common  wanton.  But  Hosea*s  love 
for  her  knew  no  change.  He  buys  her  back, 
restores  her  to  his  home,  and  encompasses 
her  with  a  love  that  was  powerless  to  re- 
form her  but  that  transformed  him  by  its 
very  purity  and  utter  negation  of  self.  As 
he  thought  it  over,  the  hand  of  God  was 
again  as  visible  as  in  the  marriage.  Both 
were  stages  in  the  discipline  of  Hosea  from 
which  he  issued  the  supreme  laureate  of  love 
in  the  Old  Testament.  When  he  recounts 
it,  the  divine  imperative  comes  again  to  the 
fore :  "  Then  said  the  Lord  unto  me,  Go  yet, 
love  a  woman  beloved  of  her  friend,  yet  an 
adulteress,  according  to  the  love  of  the  Lord 
toward  the  children  of  Israel,  who  look  to 
other  gods,  and  love  flagons  of  wine.  So 
I  bought  her  to  me  for  fifteen  pieces  of  sil- 
ver, and  for  an  homer  of  barley,  and  an  half 
homer  of  barley :  And  I  said  unto  her,  Thou 
shalt  abide  for  me  many  days;  thou  shalt 
not  play  the  harlot,  and  thou  shalt  not  be 
for  another  man:  so  will  I  also  be  for 
thee"  (3:1-3). 

The  story  is  a  strange  and  appealing  one. 


124  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

not  because  of  the  faithlessness  of  a  worth- 
less woman  but  because  of  the  effect  on 
Hosea.  •  Had  he  put  her  away,  or  had  she 
and  her  betrayer  been  put  to  death  (Deuter- 
onomy 22:22),  all  legal  requirements  would 
have  been  fulfilled.  But  instead  of  sub- 
mitting himself  to  a  formal  code,  Hosea  fol- 
lows the  errant  Gomer  with  a  love  and 
tenderness  so  pure,  so  solicitous,  so  undevi- 
ating  that  he  was  lifted  to  a  realization  of 
God's  love  not  vouchsafed  to  any  other 
prophet  in  the  Old  Testament.  He  had 
found  it  hard  to  understand  how  God  could 
love  an  inconstant  and  unresponsive  people. 
Now  he  understands  it,  for  he  has  learned 
that  love  is  not  dependent  on  reward  or  re- 
turn, that  it  does  not  measure  its  outgoing 
by  the  prospect  of  a  fixed  income,  that  it 
has  an  absolute  value  of  its  own,  that  it 
emancipates  the  lover  if  not  the  loved, 

That  it  all  sordid  baseness  doth  expel. 
And  the  refined  mind  doth  newly  fashion 
Unto  a  fairer  form,  which  now  doth  dwell 
In  his  high  thoughts,  that  would  itself  excel. 

Browning,  you  remember,  makes  the  dying 
St.  John  say : 

For  life,  with  all  it  yields  of  joy  and  woe. 
And  hope  and  fear,— believe  the  aged  friend,— 


HOSEA  125 

Is  just  our  chance  o*  the  prize  of  learning  love, 
How  love  might  be,  hath  been  indeed,  and  is. 

Hosea  had  learned  it  but  learned  it  in  a  way 
as  unexpected  by  him  as  was  the  wreck  of 
his  early  hope.  Edwin  Markham  has  a  few 
lines,  the  central  thought  of  which  might 
well  be  ascribed  to  Hosea: 

He  drew  a  circle  that  shut  me  out — 
Heretic,  rebel,  a  thing  to  flout ; 
But  Love  and  I  had  the  wit  to  win — 
We  drew  a  circle  that  took  him  in. 

But  Hosea's  circle  not  only  took  in  the 
offending  Gomer;  it  compassed  the  whole 
range  of  a  new  life;  its  center  had  ceased  to 
be  self  and  had  become  in  turn  another, 
then  love,  then  God. 

I  do  not  believe  that  literature  furnishes  a 
parallel  to  the  motif  of  the  book  of  Hosed, 
"  It  is  characteristic  of  August  Strindberg," 
says  Archibald  Henderson,'  "  that,  in  his 
effort  to  portray  the  most  vital,  most  in- 
tense form  of  conflict,  he  should  instinctively 
find  his  dramatic  theme  in  the  torturing  con- 
flicts of  his  own  family  life."  But  Strind- 
berg  uses  the  conflicts  of  his  family  life  only 
as  the  means  of  venting  an  implacable  hate. 
* "  European  Dramatists  "  (1913),  p.  46. 


126  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

That  a  man  could  be  made  purer  and 
stronger  by  the  power  of  a  love  that  was 
not  returned,  that  was  even  trampled  in  the 
mire,  is  a  motif  far  beyond  the  ken  of  Strind- 
berg.  In  Crime  and  Punishment  by  Dosto- 
yevsky  we  have  a  murderer  for  the  hero  and 
a  prostitute  for  the  heroine;  but  the  final 
regeneration  of  both  is  brought  about  in  the 
traditional  way,  by  love,  suffering,  and  serv- 
ice, shared  and  ennobled.  In  the  Scarlet 
Letter  Hawthorne  inhibits  all  sympathy  with 
the  wronged  husband  by  making  him  the 
very  nemesis  of  unforgetting  and  unforgiv- 
ing malignity.  "  The  Hosea  motif  has  in- 
terested me  also,"  writes  Dr.  R.  A.  Tsanoff,* 
*'  not  as  an  object  of  research  but  as  an 
ethical  problem  and  as  a  literary  idea.  I  am 
not  aware  of  any  modern  Hosea.  Is  the 
idea  alien  to  us  that  it  has  not  been  utilized 
in  literary  material  more  often?  Do  you 
suppose  that  man  has  gone  about  the  busi- 
ness of  saving  his  soul  by  the  direct  road? 
We  must  be  spiritually  more  selfish  than  we 
imagine.  *  Whoso  would  save  his  own  life 
must  save  that  of  another.'  " 

Men  doubtless  pointed  the  finger  of  scoTn 
at  the  prophet  but  the  happiest  man,  the 

'  Author  of  "  The  Problem  of  Life  in  the  Russiam 
Novel"  (1917). 


HOSEA  127 

freest  man,  the  highest  man  in  Israel  was 
Hosea,  the  son  of  Beeri,  but  not  because  he 
did  not  visit  legal  punishment  upon  Gomer. 
Nowhere  is  it  intimated  that  his  treatment 
of  Gomer  should  become  the  model  for 
similar  cases.  By  no  means.  But  the  man 
had  found  himself,  had  felt  the  slipping 
away  of  narrowness  and  selfishness,  had  ex- 
perienced an  emotion  so  novel  and  yet  so 
abiding  and  blessed  that  he  knew  that  the 
finite  within  him  had  touched  the  infinite 
above  him.  He  did  not  stop  to  analyze  it 
all;  it  never  occurred  to  him  to  seek  to 
justify  himself  by  recourse  to  the  law  of  the 
land.  No,  he  hastened  to  write  down  not 
a  new  method  with  faithless  wives  but  a 
new  conception  of  God.  "Just  as  I,"  he 
reasoned,  "  love  Gomer  in  spite  of  her  de- 
fection, so  does  God,  though  in  a  vaster 
way,  love  Israel  in  spite  of  its  rebellious- 
ness." And  from  that  moment  the  new  con- 
ception of  God  began  to  spread  throughout 
Israel  and  from  Israel  throughout  Judah. 
Religion  became  at  once  and  has  continued 
less  and  less  a  matter  of  formal  adherence 
to  an  imposed  code  and  more  and  more  the 
power  of  a  full-orbed  life  that  has  love  of 
God  at  its  center  and  glad  service  as  its 
expression. 


128  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

A  Deity  believed  is  joy  begun, 
A  Deity  adored  is  joy  advanced, 
A  Deity  beloved  is  joy  matured. 

Major  and  minor  prophets  catch  the  im- 
port of  the  larger  vision  and  chant  its  beauty 
and  its  appeal  to  an  ever  v^idening  circle  of 
listeners.  When  the  book  of  Deuteronomy 
was  brought  from  its  long  seclusion  a  cen- 
tury later  and  men  heard  once  more  the 
w^ords,  "  Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God 
vi^ith  all  thine  heart,  and  v^ith  all  thy  soul, 
and  v^ith  all  thy  might,"  did  not  neighbor 
exchange  glances  w^ith  neighbor  and  talk 
again  of  the  message  of  Hosea?  Had  not 
this  single  prophet  of  Israel  done  more  to 
prepare  both  king  and  people  for  the  recep- 
tion of  the  nev^  message  than  any  prophet 
who  had  lived  in  the  long  interim?  The 
last  chapter  of  the  last  book  of  the  Bible 
returns  again  to  the  marriage  figure  first 
employed  by  the  first  prophet.  God  is 
wedded  to  the  Church  but  the  Church  has 
made  itself  worthy.  Hosea  does  not  say, 
"  God  is  love.'*  That  was  reserved  for  him 
who  had  seen  the  Christ  and  therefore 
knew.  But  closest  to  St.  John  among  the 
prophets,  as  St.  John  was  closest  to  Christ 
among  the  disciples,  is  the  figure  of  Hosea, 
husband  of  Gomer. 


VI 

THE  GOSPEL  OF  JOHN 

I 

"  T^X  O  not  regard  the  Gospels  as  biog- 
I       M  ^raphies — they  are  only  sketches." 

-■— ^  This  warning  or  its  equivalent 
one  finds  prominently  posted  in  nearly  every 
Introduction  to  the  New  Testament  or  Life 
of  Christ  or  special  edition  of  any  one  of  the 
four  Gospels.  The  next  few  years,  how- 
ever, are  going  to  witness  a  complete  re- 
versal of  the  current  view  and  the  Gospels 
are  going  to  be  recognized  not  only  as  biog- 
raphies but  as  the  first  biographies  known 
in  literature.  Stranger  still,  when  the  King 
James  translation  of  the  Bible  appeared  in 
1611  the  English  language  had  even  then  no 
native  biography  to  its  credit.  The  four 
Gospels  were,  therefore,  the  first  biographies 
to  be  put  into  English,  and  not  until  old  Sir 
Isaac  Walton  entered  the  field  a  generation 
later  was  there  an  English  biography  that 
could  be  even  grouped  with  the  four  master- 
pieces that  usher  in  the  New  Testament. 

The  pivot  on  which  the  whole  question 
turns  is  the  word  or  rather  the  concept  per- 
129 


130  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

sonality.  *'  Biography,"  says  Sir  Sidney 
Lee/  ''  aims  at  satisfying  the  commemora- 
tive instinct  by  exercise  of  its  power  to 
transmit  personality."  Samuel  Parr,  who 
had  intended  to  write  the  life  of  Dr.  Samuel 
Johnson,  said  of  his  proposed  work:  ''  I  had 
read  through  three  shelves  of  books  to  pre- 
pare myself  for  it.  It  would  have  contained 
a  view  of  the  literature  of  Europe.  .  .  . 
It  would  have  been  the  third  most  learned 
work  that  has  ever  appeared."  But  it  would 
not  have  been  Johnson  and  would  not,  there- 
fore, have  merited  the  name  of  biography. 
Boswell,  whose  Life  of  Johnson  remains  the 
measure  of  biographic  excellence  in  all  lan- 
guages, said  of  his  work :  "  I  am  absolutely 
sure  that  my  mode  of  biography,  which 
gives  not  only  a  history  of  Johnson's  visible 
progress  through  the  world  .  .  .  but  a 
view  of  his  mind  ...  is  the  most  per- 
fect that  can  be  conceived."  It  is  not  the 
number  of  facts,  or  the  orderly  arrangement 
of  them,  or  the  pains  taken  in  securing  them, 
that  makes  a  work  a  biography.  There 
must  be  the  clear  recognition  of  the  per- 
sonality of  the  man  about  whom  you  write, 
and  this  recognition  must  control  the  choice, 

'See  his  "  Principles  of  Biography,**  and  Walter  H. 
Dunn's  **  English  Biography  "  (1916). 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  JOHN  131 

the  order,  and  the  significance  of  the  facts 
presented.  If  your  work  does  not  transmit 
personality,  it  may  still  be  informing,  but  it 
is  not  biography.  If  it  does  transmit  per- 
sonality, however  few  the  facts  and  however 
many  the  gaps,  you  have  achieved  a  biog- 
raphy. 

Does  not  each  of  the  four  Gospels  trans- 
mit the  personality  of  Christ?  Is  not  this 
their  central  theme?  Not  one  of  them  at- 
tempts to  fill  in  each  year  or  any  one  year  of 
Christ's  Hfe.  But  the  incidents  selected  are 
vitally  significant;  the  sayings  are  steeped 
in  personality;  the  deeds  speak  as  con- 
vergently  as  the  sayings;  even  the  things 
omitted  testify  to  unity  of  conception;  and 
the  harmony  of  the  whole  is  itself  a  sort  of 
miniature  biography.  It  was  not  the  power 
of  Christ  that  drew  His  disciples  to  Him : 
it  was  the  magnetism  of  His  personality. 
It  was  this  that  held  them,  and  it  was  this 
that  they  tried  to  body  forth  in  their  teach- 
ings aiid  writings.  Compare  the  Gospels 
with  any  of  the  countless  Lives  of  the 
Saints.  There  is  no  selective  genius  in  the 
latter,  no  sensitiveness  to  the  elements  that 
make  for  personality;  enumeration  takes  the 
place  of  interpretation;  gaps  are  fluently 
filled  with  the  irrelevant  and  the  non-essen- 


132  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

tial;  eisegesis  everywhere  usurps  the  func- 
tion of  exegesis.  To  my  mind  nothing 
speaks  more  eloquently  of  the  divine  per- 
sonality of  Christ  than  the  unwillingness  of 
the  Evangelists  to  obtrude  their  own  com- 
ments or  to  itemize  the  unrecorded  years  by 
additions  of  their  own.  The  gaps  were  as 
evident  to  them  as  to  us,  but  the  personality 
that  moves  through  their  pages  had  power 
to  impose  silence  as  well  as  to  compel 
speech. 

II 

And  yet,  though  the  four  Gospels  are  the 
first  four  biographies,  though  they  are  one 
in  the  common  attempt  to  limn  the  most 
marvellous  personality  that  ever  appeared 
among  men,  John's  method  marks  a  dis- 
tinct advance  upon  that  of  his  predecessors. 
Matthew,  Mark,  and  Luke  saw  the  person- 
ality of  Christ  most  clearly  reflected  in  the 
deeds  that  proclaimed  Him  the  Son  of  God 
and  in  the  words  that  proclaimed  Him  the 
supreme  teacher  of  righteousness  and  salva- 
tion. "What  did  He  do?"  "What  did  He 
say  about  duty  to  God  and  man?" — these 
questions  furnish  the  clue  to  the  first  three 
Gospels.  But  the  clue  to  John's  Gospel  is 
"  Who  is  He?  "  This  question  is  far  deeper 
in  its  reach  and  wider  in  its  implications 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  JOHN  133 

than  the  other  questions.  By  answering  it 
John's  Gospel  not  only  supplements  the 
other  Gospels;  it  underlies  them.  It  is  not 
so  much  roof  as  foundation.  Tell  me  who  a 
man  is  and  I  can  tell  you  whether  his  deeds 
and  doctrines  are  emanations  from  within 
or  additions  from  without.  Matthew,  Mark, 
and  Luke,  for  example,  all  record  the 
miracle  of  Christ's  feeding-  the  five  thou- 
sand. John  alone  adds  that  Christ  said: 
"  I  am  the  bread  of  Hfe :  He  that  cometh  to 
me  shall  not  hunger;  and  he  that  believeth 
on  me  shall  never  thirst"  (6:35).  This  is 
not  a  case  of  gathering  up  the  fragments 
that  the  other  Evangelists  had  left:  it  is  the 
central  and  abiding  part  of  the  miracle. 
The  actual  loaves  were  but  fragments  of  the 
creative  "  I  am." 

Artists  talk  of  the  Raphael  touch.  It  is 
the  addition  to  a  painting,  whether  in  con- 
ception or  execution,  that  only  Raphael 
could  give.  The  St.  John  touch  is  as  clearly 
marked  among  the  biographers  of  Christ  as 
the  Raphael  touch  among  Renaissance 
artists.  Haunting  beauty  of  phrase,  a  per- 
vasive suggestiveness  as  of  depth  below 
depth  in  the  thought,  perfect  unity  in  tex- 
ture and  pattern,  wide  horizons  beckoning 
always,  the  divine  so  clearly  envisaged  that 


134  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

it  seems  the  human  and  the  human  so 
irradiated  that  it  seems  the  divine — these 
are  evident  at  even  a  first  reading.  But  be- 
neath these,  giving  wholeness  and  sym- 
metry to  every  part,  is  the  quest  for  that 
central  font  in  Christ  v^hich  we,  veiling  our 
ignorance,  call  personaUty.  Only  the  first 
stages  of  this  quest  had  been  attained  by 
Matthew,  Mark,  and  Luke.  It  was  left  for 
John  to  recall  and  record  those  sayings  of 
our  Lord  in  which  "  I  am,"  surpassing  in 
content  both  miracle  and  parable,  proved  at 
last  the  most  revealing  miracle  and  the  most 
illuminating  parable. 

Try  to  think  what  a  blank  there  would  be 
in  the  world's  knowledge  of  Christ  and  in  its 
fellowship  with  Him  if  we  did  not  know  that 
He  said: 

"  I  am  the  living  bread  which  came  down 
from  heaven :  if  any  man  eat  of  this  bread, 
he  shall  live  forever"  (6:  51). 

"  I  am  the  light  of  the  world :  he  that  fol- 
loweth  me  shall  not  walk  in  darkness,  but 
shall  have  the  light  of  life  "  (8 :  12). 

"  I  am  the  door:  by  me  if  any  man  enter 
in,  he  shall  be  saved  "  (10 :  9). 

"  I  am  the  good  shepherd:  the  good  shep- 
herd giveth  his  life  for  the  sheep  "  (10: 11). 

"  I  am  the  resurrection  and  the  life :  he 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  JOH^^  135 

that  believeth  in  me,  though  he  were  dead, 
yet  shall  he  live"  (11:25). 

'*  I  am  the  way,  the  truth,  and  the  life :  no 
man  cometh  unto  the  Father,  but  by  me  ** 
(14:6). 

•'  I  am  the  true  vine,  and  my  Father  is  the 
husbandman"  (15:1). 

*' I  am  the  vine,  ye  are  the  branches: 
he  that  abideth  in  me,  and  I  in  him,  the 
same  bringeth  forth  much  fruit"  (15:  5). 

Note,  too,  that  if  Christ  does  not  say  "  I 
am  love  "  in  so  many  words,  He  says  it  in 
passages  of  which  "  I  am  love  "  is  only  the 
crystallization.  "A  new  commandment  I 
give  unto  you,  that  ye  love  one  another;  as 
I  have  loved  you,  that  ye  also  love  one  an- 
other "  (13:34).  It  was  not  a  new  com- 
mandment that  they  should  love  one  an- 
other, but  it  was  new  that  they  should  love 
one  another  as  He  had  loved  them,  He  who, 
being  life  and  light,  was  necessarily  love. 
When  John  says,  therefore,  in  his  First 
Epistle,  "  God  is  love  "  (4:8),  he  is  but  in- 
terpreting and  summarizing  the  passages 
about  love  that  he  was  later  to  record  in  his 
Gospel. 

It  is  these  great  "  I  am  "  passages  and  the 
passages  that  radiate  from  them  that  give 
distinctive  character  and  appeal  to  John's 


136  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

Gospel.  Not  one  of  these  passages  is  found 
in  Matthew,  Mark,  or  Luke.  Matthew  at 
least  must  have  heard  Christ  when  He 
uttered  these  words  but  Matthew's  ear  was 
not  as  finely  attuned  to  spiritual  undertones 
as  John's.  The  best  loved  disciple,  had  he 
written  as  early  as  Matthew  or  Mark  or 
Luke,  might  have  supplemented  their 
records  merely  with  more  miracles  and 
more  parables.  As  the  years  passed,  how- 
ever, reflection  taught  him  new  values. 
Autobiography  is  a  kind  of  biography,  but  it 
comes  later.  John's  Gospel  is  in  a  sense 
autobiography  succeeding  biography.  But, 
if  the  distinction  may  be  made,  it  is  a  new 
kind  of  autobiography,  Christ  revealing 
Himself  not  merely  in  His  own  words,  but 
in  those  words  that  connote  inner  being 
rather  than  outer  action.  The  verb  to  he 
takes  precedence  of  the  verb  to  do.  To  note 
and  record  this  kind  of  self-revelation  de- 
mands a  sensitiveness  to  the  meaning  of 
personalia,  a  delicacy  of  spiritual  interpreta- 
tion, a  balance  between  observation  and  re- 
action to  observation,  a  faculty  of  recon- 
structive thinking,  a  passion  for  ultimate 
rather  than  mediate  things  that  only  a  few 
have  had  and  not  one  in  equal  measure  with 
St.  John. 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  JOHN  137 

III 

It  is  often  said  that  St.  John's  Gospel 
shows  the  evidence  of  Jewish  Alexandrian 
philosophy,  that  it  was  written  to  offset  cer- 
tain speculative  tendencies  that  had  become 
current  since  the  appearance  of  the  first  Gos- 
pels. The  argument  seems  to  me  greatly- 
overworked.  The  speculative  philosophy 
of  his  day  may  have  tinged  St.  John's 
vocabulary  here  and  there  but  there  is  no 
need  to  invoke  its  aid  further.  The  central 
current  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  finds  its  chan- 
nel not  in  outside  influences  but  in  the  char- 
acter of  St.  John,  in  the  limitations  of  the 
Gospels  already  written,  and  in  the  crisis 
through  which  Christianity  was  passing 
when  only  one  of  the  elect  twelve  was  left 
to  testify  of  his  Master.  Let  us  note  these 
briefly  in  order. 

Though  we  know  little  of  St.  John's  life 
outside  of  his  writings,  the  character  of  the 
man  is  self-portrayed  in  his  Gospel,  his  three 
Epistles,  and  the  Book  of  Revelation.  In 
bulk  Luke  contributed  more  to  the  New 
Testament  than  any  one  else,  but  in  variety 
John  stands  easily  first.  Luke  excels  in 
pure  narration,  in  the  clear  and  orderly 
sequence  of  events,  the  single  event  being 
with  him  the  narrative  unit.     But  in  causal 


138  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

connection,  in  atmosphere,  in  absolute  har- 
mony of  tone,  in  mastery  of  all  forms  of  ex- 
pression that  hint  more  than  they  say  and 
quicken  to  their  full  capacity  all  types  of 
receptive  intelligence,  John  has  no  equal. 
His  unit  is  never  the  bare  event,  never  the 
mere  deed.  In  his  Gospel  the  unit  is  the 
heart-beat  of  personality;  in  his  Epistles  it 
is  the  note  of  fellov^ship  with  the  Father, 
from  which  the  deed  springs  as  flower  from 
seed;  in  the  Apocalypse  it  is  the  symbol  that 
foreshadows  the  event.  The  event  flashes 
and  is  gone;  the  matrix  from  which  it  arose 
abides.  A  man  who  felt  as  John  felt,  who 
saw  life  from  his  angle,  who  was  privileged 
to  be  the  intimate  of  Christ,  who  was  known 
preeminently  as  the  disciple  whom  Jesus 
loved,  and  who  was  commissioned  by  Jesus 
from  the  cross  to  be  son  to  Mary  in  His 
stead,  would  not  need  to  have  his  Gospel 
shaped  by  current  philosophies.  It  sprang 
from  a  character  naturally  malleable  to 
spiritual  pressures.  It  was  the  reaction  of 
an  intense  personality  to  the  personality  of 
One  who  combined  in  Himself  every  height 
that  John  had  glimpsed  in  experience  or 
vision. 

But  the  limitations  of  Matthew,  Mark, 
and  Luke  called  for  a  Fourth  Gospel  as  in- 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  JOHN  139 

sistently  as  did  the  native  bent  of  John's 
character.  What  they  recorded  they  re- 
corded in  a  form  and  spirit  beyond  the  cen- 
sure of  even  hostile  criticism.  What  v^as 
beyond  their  ken,  what  did  not  seem  to 
them  central  and  organic  in  the  Master's 
life,  they  omitted.  They  never  for  a  mo- 
ment doubted  that  He  was  the  Son  of  God 
and  the  promised  Messiah.  Matthew's 
Gospel  is  indeed  a  sort  of  Panama  Canal 
between  the  Old  Testament  and  the  New. 
The  supreme  revelation  of  Christ's  per- 
sonality was  in  Matthew's  mind  that  He  was 
the  long-looked-for  Messiah,  that  in  Him 
the  tides  of  both  dispensations  met. 
Matthew  was  eager  to  record  every  event 
in  Christ's  life  to  which  could  be  added, 
"  That  it  might  be  fulfilled."  Mark  cared 
less  for  fulfillment  and  more  for  the  achieve- 
ments that  heralded  Christ  as  the  Son  of 
God.  Luke's  Gospel  is  the  synthesis  of  the 
two,  it  being  as  he  tells  us  a  "  treatise  of  all 
that  Jesus  began  both  to  do  and  to  teach  " 
(Acts  1:1). 

But  men  were  constantly  asking  a  ques- 
tion which  these  Gospels  did  not  adequately 
answer.  "  Suppose  He  is  the  Messiah  and 
the  Son  of  God.  This  is  only  His  office,  His 
relationship.     Tell  us  not  what  He  is  but 


140  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

who  He  is."  This  demand  recurs  again  and 
again  in  the  first  three  Gospels.  ''  Some 
say  that  thou  art  John  the  Baptist:  some, 
EUas;  and  others  Jeremias,  or  one  of  the 
prophets"  {Matthew  16:14).  "Is  not  this  the 
carpenter,  the  son  of  Mary?"  {Mark  6:3). 
*'Is  not  this  Joseph's  son?"  {Luke  4:22). 
This  question  must  have  gathered  momen- 
tum as  the  Gospel  was  preached  in  distant 
lands;  it  must  have  deepened  in  meaning  in 
proportion  to  the  range  of  thought  of  those 
that  asked  it.  To  say  that  Christ  was  the 
Messiah  or  the  Son  of  God  or,  as  He  called 
Himself,  the  Son  of  Man,  was  not  in  itself 
to  link  Him  with  universal  human  need,  to 
bring  Him  home  to  men's  business  and 
bosoms,  to  make  Him  the  comrade  of  all  the 
ages.  Another  answer  was  needed,  an  an- 
swer less  cryptic,  and  more  soluble  in  the 
daily  wants  of  ordinary  humanity.  Christ 
had  Himself  given  the  answer  in  many  self- 
revealing  discourses  but  these  had  found  no 
place  in  the  Gospels  already  extant.  Life, 
light,  love,  truth,  the  door,  the  way,  the  liv- 
ing bread, — the  identification  of  Christ  with 
these  recurrent  and  elemental  needs  was  to 
prove  not  merely  a  vaster  interpretation  but 
almost  a  rediscovery  of  the  Saviour  of  men. 
In  addition,  however,  to  the  character  of 


THE  GOSPEL  OP  JOHN  141 

St.  John  and  to  the  lacunae  in  the  Gospels 
that  preceded  his,  there  is  another  con- 
sideration that  cannot  be  omitted  in  any 
survey  of  the  hinterland  from  which  issued 
the  Fourth  Gospel.  Put  yourself  in  the 
place  of  the  Evangelist.  His  fellow  disciples 
were  dead  and  he  alone  survived  of  those 
who  had  journeyed  with  Christ,  conversed 
with  Him,  and  seen  with  their  own  eyes  the 
mastery  that  He  exercised  over  nature,  dis- 
ease, and  death.  John  could  still  convince 
the  doubters  by  saying",  "  I  knew  Him,  I 
heard  Him,  I  saw  Him  heal  the  sick  and 
raise  the  dead."  The  argument  from  per- 
sonal contact  and  personal  observation  must 
have  had  the  same  force  then  as  now. 
Human  nature  at  bottom  has  not  changed. 
But  John  lived  on  into  an  age  in  which  the 
thought  must  have  come  to  him  with  in- 
creasing force :  "  How  will  it  be  when  I  am 
gone?  When  none  is  left  to  say  *  I  saw  '?  '* 
This  crisis  in  the  history  of  Christianity 
John  seems  to  me  to  have  previsioned  far 
more  vividly  than  any  of  his  predecessors. 
It  was  a  crisis  which  Christ  had  not  only 
foreseen  but  provided  for  in  discourses 
which  John  alone  was  to  record.  Those 
long  centuries  that  were  to  heap  themselves 
upon  the  short  years  of  Christ's  ministry, 


142  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

the  new  nations  and  languages  and  civiliza- 
tions that  were  to  thrust  themselves  be- 
tween, the  vast  abysm  of  time  across  which 
men  must  look  and  listen  to  see  the  face  and 
to  hear  the  voice  of  the  Son  of  Man,  the  cry 
that  would  go  up  so  often  from  waiting 
hearts,  ''  Could  I  but  see  Him  and  touch  the 
hem  of  His  garment  " — this  was  a  burden 
which  Christ  bore  in  advance,  a  chasm  which 
He  bridged  so  that  all  succeeding  genera- 
tions might  pass  securely  over. 

But  the  story  of  the  miracles  wrought  in 
the  olden  time  would  not  alone  avail  for 
these  waiting  centuries  and  St.  John  deals 
more  sparingly  in  miracles  than  any  other 
Evangelist.  The  miracle  after  all  is  only  a 
sort  of  first  aid  to  the  unbelieving.  "Blessed 
are  they,'*  says  Jesus,  "  that  have  not  seen, 
and  yet  have  believed"  (20:29).  Nor 
would  additional  parables  have  met  the 
need.  The  parable  is  the  unapproached 
model  of  much  in  little  but  it  shows  Christ 
as  the  matchless  teacher  rather  than  as  the 
companion  whose  personality  will  enrich  all 
personalities  that  come  within  its  orbit. 
What  these  waiting  centuries  wanted  was 
not  new  evidence  that  Christ  had  lived  and 
had  taught  but  that  He  was  still  living  and 
still  teaching.     The  emphasis  must  novr  be 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  JOHN  143 

put  on  those  qualities  of  Christ's  personality 
which  each  man,  in  whatever  century  he 
lived,  could  test  for  himself,  could  apply  to 
his  own  spirit  needs,  could  instantly  vindi- 
cate in  his  own  experience.  Men  do  not 
argue  about  bread :  they  taste  it. 

John's  faith  was  no  longer  dependent  on 
the  miracles  and  wonders  that  he  had  seen 
Christ  do.  These  were  but  scaffolding; 
their  support  was  no  longer  needed.  John 
calls  them  signs,  never  miracles, — signs  of 
a  continuing  presence  behind  them  that  in- 
finitely transcended  in  faith  value  any  one 
of  them  or  all  of  them.  External  evidence, 
the  evidence  of  John's  eye  and  ear,  had 
found  internal  warrant,  the  warrant  of  an 
answering  life.  And  this  new  stage  in  the 
Apostle's  faith  forecast  accurately  the  whole 
future  appeal  of  Christianity.  The  time  had 
come  when  the  nature  of  the  evidence  for 
the  living  Christ  must  be  changed.  Those 
who  are  to  hand  the  torch  down  the  ages 
must  have  more  to  say  than,  **  Believe  on 
Him  because  of  the  wonderful  works  which 
we  can  prove  that  He  did,  and  the  wonder- 
ful doctrines  which  we  can  prove  that  He 
taught."  They  must  know  those  self-evi- 
dencing qualities,  those  self-vindicating 
Tirtues,  those  self-validating  forces  which 


144  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

stream  from  the  personality  of  Christ  and 
which  defy  ahke  the  corrosion  of  time  that 
has  been  and  the  menace  of  time  yet  to  be. 
They  must  say,  "  Christ  is  not  a  past  his- 
tory: He  is  an  abiding  Hfe,  not  to  be  rea- 
soned about  but  to  be  Hved.  Appropriation, 
not  argumentation,  is  the  key-word."  This 
is  how  John's  Gospel  met  the  crisis  of  the 
coming  centuries. 

IV 

Among  the  radiant  words  about  which 
the  Evangelist's  thought  loves  to  circle,  is 
it  possible  to  select  one  that  may  rightly  be 
said  to  sound  the  keynote  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel?  I  think  so.  That  word  is  life. 
Light,  love,  truth,  and  all  the  rest  are  but 
branches  of  this  vine,  though,  like  the 
branches  of  the  banyan  tree,  they  may  dip 
down  and  become  the  roots  of  the  new  life 
themselves.     But 

'Tis  life,  whereof  our  nerves  are  scant. 
Oh  life,  not  death,  for  which  we  pant. 

This  Gospel  says  and  suggests  more  of  life, 
of  its  potential  beauty  and  power,  of  its 
height  and  depth,  of  its  reach  and  range  and 
possibility,  of  its  beginning  and  growth  and 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  JOHN  145 

culmination  in  Christ,  than  is  said  or  sug- 
gested in  all  the  rest  of  the  New  Testament 
combined. 

It  is  life  with  which  it  starts.  Mark  had 
begun  his  Gospel  with  the  baptism  of 
Christ;  Luke  with  the  annunciation  to 
Mary;  Matthew  with  "Jesus  Christ,  the  son 
of  David,  the  son  of  Abraham."  But  John 
begins  by  saying  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
B.  C.  The  life  of  Christ  had  no  beginning. 
AH  is  A.  D.  And  he  closes  his  Gospel  on 
the  same  infinite  note.  If  all  the  activities 
of  this  life,  even  during  its  ministry  of  a 
paltry  three  years,  should  be  recorded,  ''  I 
suppose  that  even  the  world  itself  could  not 
contain  the  books  that  should  be  written." 
This  is  not  exaggeration.  It  is  merely  a 
human  attempt  to  express  the  infinite,  to 
bind  in  the  radiations  of  a  life  that  had  no 
beginning  and  can  have  no  end. 

It  is  life  restored  in  whole  or  in  part  that 
forms  the  theme  of  every  miracle  recorded 
by  John,  every  miracle,  that  is,  that  has  to 
do  with  men.  "Thy  son  liveth,"  cry  the 
servants  to  the  anxious  nobleman.  "  So 
the  father  knew  that  it  was  at  the  same 
hour,  in  the  which  Jesus  said  unto  him.  Thy 
son  liveth  "  (4:  53).  The  impotent  man  at 
the  pool  of  Bethesda  had  waited  thirty-eight 


146  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

years  for  some  one  to  put  him  into  the  heal- 
ing spring.  "  Jesus  saith  unto  him,  Rise, 
take  up  thy  bed,  and  walk.  And  immedi- 
ately the  man  was  made  whole"  (5:8-9). 
To  another  He  said,  "  Go,  wash  in  the  pool 
of  Siloam  "  (9:7),  and  the  poor  fragment 
of  life  washed  and  was  made  whole.  Before 
the  resurrection  of  Lazarus  were  the  words : 
*'  I  am  the  resurrection  and  the  life :  he  that 
believeth  in  me,  though  he  were  dead,  yet 
shall  he  live"  (11:25).  This,  rather  than 
"  Lazarus,  come  forth,"  was  the  divine  im- 
perative to  which  death  gave  heed.  And 
the  raising  of  Lazarus  was  but  itself  a 
gesture  of  infinite  personality,  a  mere  inci- 
dent in  the  dateless  sovereignty  of  the  Lord 
both  of  life  and  of  death. 

Finally,  it  is  life  that  in  John's  own  words 
gives  the  central  purpose  and  import  of  his 
Gospel.  The  ministry  of  this  Gospel  thus 
confirms  and  encompasses  the  ministries  of 
the  three  Gospels  that  precede  it;  but  John 
adds  as  its  ultimate  ministry  that  the  life  of 
One  might  flow  through  the  sluice-gate  of 
faith  into  the  life  of  all.  "And  many  other 
signs  truly  did  Jesus  in  the  presence  of  his 
disciples,  which  are  not  written  in  this  book. 
But  these  are  written  that  ye  might  believe 
that  Jesus  is  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  God; 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  JOHN  147 

and    that    believing    ye    might    have    life 
through  his  name  "  (20:  30-31). 

V 
The  older  commentators  used  to  make 
much  of  symbols  in  their  interpretation  of 
the  Gospels.  Matthew^  v^as  represented  by 
a  man,  Mark  by  a  lion,  Luke  by  an  ox,  and 
John  by  an  eagle.  As  the  eagle,  scorning 
the  earth,  loves  to  soar  into  the  mysterious 
blue,  and  to  roam  through  skyey  spaces 
measureless  to  man,  so  John,  it  was  thought, 
loves  to  poise  at  dizzy  heights,  and  to  sw^eep 
through  realms  impenetrable  to  eye  or 
mind.  But  the  figure  is  not  apt.  No,  not 
the  eagle  is  the  fitting  symbol  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel.  If  we  are  to  find  our  symbol 
among  the  inhabitants  of  those  argent 
spaces  between  earth  and  sky,  let  us  choose 
one  that  shall  suggest  neither  aloofness  nor 
solitariness.  Let  it  be  one  that  seeks  the 
upper  levels  of  air,  seeks  them  daily,  but 
only  that  it  may  return  and  bring  the  rap- 
ture of  the  heights  into  the  humbler  life  of 
the  plain.  Not  the  eagle  shall  be  our  sym- 
bol but  the  skylark, 

Type  of  the  wise  who  soar,  but  never  roam"; 
True  to  the  kindred  points  of  Heaven  and 
Home. 


VII 

THE  EPISTLE  TO  THE  ROMANS 

I 

THE  best  way  to  know  a  great  writer 
is  to  approach  him  via  his  favorite 
theme  or  themes.  If  I  were  going 
to  lecture  on  Matthew  Arnold  and  had  at 
my  disposal  only  two  lecture  periods  I 
should  in  the  first  hour  say  nothing  about 
Arnold  himself  but  devote  the  time  wholly 
to  the  question  of  culture.  If  Carlyle  were 
the  subject  the  approach  would  be  by  way 
of  shams.  Tennyson  and  Browning  would 
be  prefaced  by  a  discussion  of  the  two  kinds 
of  progress :  first,  the  slow,  uniform,  incre- 
mental kind  that  a  ball  makes  when  it 
moves  in  a  leisurely  way  over  a  level  floor; 
second,  the  irregular  and  intermittent  kind 
that  a  tumbling  box  makes  as  it  is  kicked 
from  one  point  to  another;  Tennyson  stands 
for  the  first.  Browning  for  the  second.  In 
the  case  of  Emerson,  self-reliance  would  be 
the  keynote.  O.  Henry  would  require  a 
148 


THE  EPISTLE  TO  THE  ROMANS    149 

talk  about  the  man  down  and  out,  his  de- 
sire to  get  back,  his  unwilUngness  to  be  per- 
manently classed  as  bad  or  useless.  Wood- 
row  Wilson  would  compel  us  first  of  all  to 
front  the  question  whether  we  had  not  heard 
too  much  about  the  rights  of  democracy  and 
too  little  about  its  duties. 

To  know  St.  Paul  you  must  think  as  you 
have  never  thought  before  about  the  Hmita- 
tions  of  law.  This  is  the  theme  that  he 
made  pecuHarly  his  own  and  by  making  it 
his  own  made  it  also  a  part  of  the  thought 
of  nineteen  centuries.  No  one  can  read  the 
Epistle  to  the  Romans  or  the  Bpistle  to  the 
Galatians  without  seeing  at  once  that  the 
great  Apostle's  mind  had  been  revolving 
about  this  problem  long  before  he  made  his 
journey  to  Damascus.  From  that  journey 
he  returned  a  Christian  but  his  growing  con- 
sciousness of  the  limitations  of  law  not  only 
predisposed  him  to  accept  Christ  instantly 
but  gave  to  his  acceptance  an  intellectual 
authoritativeness  impossible  before. 

Of  course  by  law  Paul  does  not  mean 
what  we  to-day  mean  by  natural  law.  The 
law  of  gravitation,  the  laws  of  heat,  of  sound, 
of  light  did  not  enter  into  the  Apostle's 
thinking.  No  one  can  speak  of  the  limita- 
tions of  these  laws  because  they  are  not 


150  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

limited.  They  are  coextensive  with  the 
sovereignty  of  nature :  or,  if  they  have  their 
Hmitations,  God  alone  knows  it,  not  we.  It 
was  chiefly  of  natural  law  that  Hooker  was 
thinking  when  he  wrote  the  famous  words  :* 
*'  Of  law  there  can  be  no  less  acknowledged 
than  that  her  seat  is  the  bosom  of  God,  her 
voice  the  harmony  of  the  world;  all  things 
in  heaven  and  earth  do  her  homage,  the 
very  least  as  feeling  her  care,  and  the  great- 
est as  not  exempted  from  her  power." 
These  words  suggest  St.  John  rather  than 
St.  Paul. 

Fortunately  we  are  not  left  in  doubt  as  to 
the  kind  of  law  that  St.  Paul  had  in  mind. 
"  I  am  verily  a  man,"  he  said  in  his  defense 
at  Jerusalem,  "which  am  a  Jew,  born  in 
Tarsus,  a  city  in  CiHcia,  yet  brought  up  in 
this  city  at  the  feet  of  Gamaliel,  and  taught 
according  to  the  perfect  manner  of  the  law 
of  the  fathers  "  (Acts  22 :  3).  You  will  find 
"  the  law  of  the  fathers  "  summarized  in  the 
twentieth,  twenty-first,  twenty-second,  and 
twenty-third  chapters  of  Exodus.  If  these 
chapters  contain  a  few  laws  or  "judgments" 
that  hardly  seem  to  us  worth  the  efiFort  of 
St.  Paul  to  invalidate,  let  us  remember  that 
they  contain  also  the  Ten  Command- 
*"  Ecclesiastical  Polity,"  Book  I,  Chapter  16. 


THE  EPISTLE  TO  THE  EOMANS    151 

ments, — laws  that  have  guided  and  shaped 
the  destiny  of  civiUzation  in  all  lands.  It 
is  no  man  of  straw,  then,  that  the  Apostle 
sets  up.  He  is  concerned  with  the  very 
concept  of  law  itself,  and  what  he  says  ap- 
pUes  to  Gentile  as  well  as  to  Jew,  to  modern 
society  as  well  as  to  ancient.  Moses  is  no 
more  truly  the  lawgiver  of  the  old  dispensa- 
tion than  Paul  is  the  law  interpreter  of  the 
new. 

II 
The  theme  of  Romans  is  usually  said  to  be 
justification  by  faith.  But  this  is  far  too 
narrow  a  view.  It  puts  the  emphasis,  more- 
over, on  the  wrong  word.  Faith  is  the 
great  word;  justification  is  one  and  only  one 
of  its  fruits.  If  you  view  the  book  other- 
wise its  center  will  not  be  in  the  middle. 
Paul  nowhere  defines  faith.'  He  illustrates 
it,  illuminates  it,  contrasts  it  with  law  and 
works,  lets  us  feel  the  glow  of  it,  but  no- 
where tries  to  circumscribe  it  with  a  defini- 
tion. There's  danger  in  definitions,  danger 
that  we  pigeonhole   the   thing  defined  in- 

'  I  need  hardly  say  that  I  do  not  consider  Hebrews 
the  work  of  Paul.  But,  even  so,  the  words,  "  Now 
faith  is  the  substance  of  things  hoped  for,  the  evi- 
dence of  things  not  seen  "  (Hebrews  11: 1),  are  not  a 
definition  and  were  not  so  intended. 


152  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

stead  of  practicing  it.  Whatever  faith  may 
be  in  its  last  analysis,  if  it  remain  only  a 
creed  with  us,  it  is  not  faith  in  the  Pauline 
sense.  It  must  be  a  habit  of  mind,  the  very 
air  that  we  breathe,  if  we  are  to  rise  to  the 
height  of  the  Apostle's  argument.  We  may 
have  moments  of  doubt — as  we  gasp  at 
times  for  breath — but  the  sense  of  emptiness 
and  loss  that  these  moments  bring  is  but 
added  evidence  that  faith  is  native  to  our 
nature. 

Do  you  remember  that  fine  thought  in 
William  James's  essay,  Is  Life  Worth  Living f 
"  That  our  whole  physical  Ufe  may  lie  soak- 
ing in  a  spiritual  atmosphere,  a  dimension  of 
Being  that  we  at  present  have  no  organ  for 
apprehending,  is  vividly  suggested  to  us  by 
the  analogy  of  the  life  of  our  domestic 
animals.  Our  dogs,  for  example,  are  w  our 
human  life  but  not  of  it.  They  witness 
hourly  the  outward  body  of  events  whose 
inner  meaning  cannot,  by  any  possible 
operation,  be  revealed  to  their  intelligence, 
events  in  which  they  themselves  often  play 
the  cardinal  part.  My  terrier  bites  a  teasing 
boy,  for  example,  and  the  father  demands 
damages.  The  dog  may  be  present  at  every 
step  of  the  negotiations,  and  see  the  money 
paid  without  an  inkling  of  what  it  all  means, 


THE  EPISTLE  TO  THE  EOMANS    153 

without  a  suspicion  that  it  has  anything  to 
do  with  him.  And  he  never  can  know  in  his 
natural  dog's  Hfe.  Or  take  another  case 
which  used  greatly  to  impress  me  in  my 
medical-student  days.  Consider  a  poor  dog 
whom  they  are  vivisecting  in  the  laboratory. 
He  lies  strapped  on  a  board  and  shrieking  at 
his  executioners,  and  to  his  own  dark  con- 
sciousness is  literally  in  a  sort  of  hell.  He 
cannot  see  a  single  redeeming  ray  in  the 
whole  business;  and  yet  all  these  diabolical- 
seeming  events  are  usually  controlled  by 
human  intentions  with  which,  if  his  poor, 
benighted  mind  could  only  be  made  to  catch 
a  glimpse  of  them,  all  that  is  heroic  in  him 
would  religiously  acquiesce.  Healing  truth, 
relief  to  future  sufferings  of  beast  and  man 
are  to  be  bought  by  them.  It  is  genuinely 
a  process  of  redemption.  Lying  on  his  back 
on  the  board  there  he  is  performing  a  func- 
tion incalculably  higher  than  any  prosper- 
ous canine  life  admits  of;  and  yet,  of  the 
whole  performance,  this  function  is  the  one 
portion  that  must  remain  absolutely  beyond 
his  ken." 

"  In  the  dog's  life,"  adds  Professor 
James,  "  we  see  the  world  invisible  to  him 
because  we  live  in  both  worlds.  In  human 
iife,  although  we  only  see  our  world,  and  his 


154  KETl^OTE  STUDIES 

within  it,  yet  encompassing  both  these 
worlds  a  still  wider  world  may  be  there  as 
unseen  by  us  as  our  world  is  by  him ;  and  to 
believe  in  that  world  may  be  the  most  essen- 
tial function  that  our  lives  in  this  world 
have  to  perform."  But  the  analogy  of  the 
mole  seems  to  me  even  more  suggestive. 
Does  he  know  that  above  his  sunless  gal- 
leries there  is  a  world  of  avenued  beauty  to 
which  his  dim  pathways  are  but  as  acorn  to 
oak?  All  that  he  could  say  would  be:  "I 
live  in  darkness  and  am  thwarted  in  my 
efforts  to  build  and  to  move  by  great, 
wide-spreading  roots.  These  tend  upward. 
Whether  they  issue  in  beauty  and  symmetry 
and  service  above,  I  do  not  know  and  can 
never  know.  But  they  point  upward,  al- 
ways upward."  Is  not  that  a  sort  of  replica 
of  our  life?  We,  too,  live  in  darkness  but 
in  every  hard  buffeting  we  seem  to  touch 
things  that  point  upward,  always  upward. 
There  is  a  surface  beyond  which  we  cannot 
pass.  But  faith  and  hope  and  love,  our 
ministrants  of  widest  vision,  say:  "  There  is, 
there  must  be  something  completer  beyond. 
All  here  is  beginning  and  fragment.  Be- 
yond the  veil  we  catch  glimpses  of  the  end 
which  the  beginning  implies,  gleams  of  the 
whole  which  the  fragment  proclaims." 


THE  EPISTLE  TO  THE  EOMANS    156 

III 
But  if  Paul  does  not  define  faith  he  ex- 
pounds it.  "  Ye  shall  know  them  by  their 
fruits,"  said  Christ,  of  the  false  prophets. 
And  of  faith  Paul  seems  to  say :  "  Ye  shall 
know  it,  too,  by  its  fruits."  The  first  fruit 
was  freedom  from  the  bondage  of  law. 
The  law  remained  but  it  no  longer  chafed. 
Paul  willed  what  it  willed.  To  its  ''  Thou 
shalt  not "  he  could  now  reply  "  I  don't 
want  to."  He  had  at  last  found  in  law  not 
repression  but  expression.  From  the  servi- 
tude of  a  slave  hearkening  to  the  command 
of  his  master,  he  had  passed  to  the  freedom 
of  a  son  hearing  the  voice  of  his  father. 
Paul  does  not  often  repeat  himself  but  this 
new  sense  of  filial  freedom  could  not  be  dis- 
missed in  a  single  passage.  In  Galatians 
(4:4-Y)  he  had  written:  "But  when  the 
fulness  of  the  time  was  come,  God  sent 
forth  his  Son,  made  of  a  woman,  made  un- 
der the  law,  to  redeem  them  that  were  un- 
der the  law,  that  we  might  receive  the  adop- 
tion of  sons.  And  because  ye  are  sons,  God 
hath  sent  forth  the  Spirit  of  his  Son  into 
your  hearts,  crying,  Abba,  Father.  Where- 
fore thou  art  no  more  a  servant,  but  a  son ; 
and  if  a  son,  then  an  heir  of  God  through 
Christ."     In   Romans   (8:14-17)    the   same 


156  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

thought  is  touched  with  new  beauty :  ''  For 
as  many  as  are  led  by  the  Spirit  of  God, 
they  are  the  sons  of  God.  For  ye  have  not 
received  the  spirit  of  bondage  again  to  fear; 
but  ye  have  received  the  Spirit  of  adoption, 
whereby  we  cry,  Abba,  Father.  The  Spirit 
itself  beareth  witness  with  our  spirit,  that 
we  are  the  children  of  God :  and  if  children, 
then  heirs;  heirs  of  God,  and  joint-heirs 
with  Christ;  if  so  be  that  we  suffer  with  him, 
that  we  may  be  also  glorified  together." 

The  weakness  of  the  law  was  that  it 
weighed,  but  did  not  increase  weight.  It 
was  a  mirror  but  not  a  magnet.  It  graded 
the  pupil  but  did  not  train  him.  A  story 
will  illustrate :  A  colored  man  of  the  old 
school  had  been  sent  by  his  employer  to  a 
hospital  to  recover  from  fever.  The  experi- 
ence was  new  to  him  but  he  was  grateful 
for  every  attention  shown  him  and  ascribed 
good  intentions  even  where  he  could  see  no 
appreciable  results.  "  Do  they  give  you 
enough  to  eat,  Uncle  Ned?  "  asked  his  em- 
ployer, who  called  daily  to  inquire  about  the 
patient's  progress.  "  Not  much,  suh,"  was 
the  reply.  "  But  I  ain't  complainin'.  Dey 
gives  me  a  piece  o'  glass  to  suck  three  times 
a  day.  I  don't  seem  to  git  much  satisfac- 
,tion  out'n  it  but  de  doctor  say  I'm  gittin' 


THE  EPISTLE  TO  THE  ROMANS    157 

better."  Paul  had  made  the  same  mistake. 
He  had  tried  to  find  spiritual  nourishment 
in  the  law,  whereas  the  law  is  more  a  ther- 
mometer than  a  diet.  It  records  mercilessly 
our  alternations  of  moral  sickness  and  health 
but  it  does  not  drive  out  sickness  and  sub- 
stitute health.  The  Epistle  to  the  Romans  is 
the  protest  of  a  man  who  had  been  holding 
a  thermometer  in  his  mouth  and  thinking  it 
was  food.  Had  the  mistake  been  peculiar 
to  St.  Paul,  the  protest  would  have  availed 
little.  But  it  was  not  peculiar  to  him.  The 
nation,  the  age,  the  legal  experts  themselves, 
those  who  obeyed  and  those  who  disobeyed 
the  law  were  suffering  from  the  same  con- 
fusion of  ideas.  Not  only  so  but  the  tend- 
ency to  the  same  kind  of  inversion  can  be 
traced  wherever  laws  are  promulgated. 
Why  is  the  tendency  less  to-day  than  then? 
Because  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans  was  written 
and  written  by  Paul,  trained  in  "  the  law  of 
the  fathers  "  but  emancipated  by  Christ. 

Emerson  touches  on  the  principle  at  issue 
in  his  lines  about  the  chickadee.  How 
could  this  scrap  of  a  bird  defy  the  winter 
cold  while  Emerson  shivered  in  coat  and 
overcoat?     The  bird  sings  the  answer: 

And  polar  frost  my  frame  defied, 
Made  of  the  air  that  blows  outside. 


158  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

Neither  man  nor  bird  nor  beast  can  be 
chilled  if  the  body  be  made  of  the  air  that 
surrounds  it.  To  suffer  from  cold  is  but  to 
proclaim  a  steep  difference  between  the 
temperature  within  and  the  temperature 
without.  Make  the  temperatures  the  same, 
normalize  them  by  the  same  standard,  let 
the  body  that  suffers  and  the  air  that  im- 
poses the  suffering  be  parts  of  one  structural 
whole,  and  you  are  equally  protected  from 
polar  cold  and  tropic  heat.  The  donning  or 
doffing  of  clothes  may  mitigate  the  sense  of 
discomfort;  it  cannot  expel  it.  When  the 
spirit  of  the  law  becomes  the  spirit  of  him 
who  strives  to  obey  it,  when  ''  God  hath  sent 
forth  the  Spirit  of  his  Son  into  your  hearts," 
jFreedom  has  been  won.  Emerson  learned 
the  physical  principle  one  snow-laden  after- 
noon ''  as  I  waded  through  the  woods  to  my 
grove."  Paul  learned  the  spiritual  prin- 
ciple as  he  journeyed  to  Damascus. 

But  with  freedom  from  the  bondage  of 
law  faith  bestowed  also  a  sense  of  instant 
acquittal.  However  fair  his  record  had  been 
as  a  keeper  of  the  law,  Paul  had  drawn  a 
lengthening  chain  of  self-condemnation. 
He  could  not  perfectly  obey,  but  to  fail  by  a 
hairbreadth  was  to  feel  the  full  weight  of 
the   law's   violation.     Nor   was    there   any 


THE  EPISTLE  TO  THE  EOMANS    159 

escape.  The  law  would  not  bend.  Obedi- 
ence heaped  upon  obedience  left  him  still 
conscious  of  a  chasm  that  spelled  guilt. 
And  not  only  he  but  all  had  sinned.  *'A11," 
said  Arnold,  "  is  in  some  sense  the  govern- 
ing word  of  the  Bpistle  to  the  Romans.''  It  is 
the  governing  word  only  of  that  part  of  the 
Epistle  that  affirms  the  universality  of 
conscious  sin  and  the  corresponding  univer- 
sality of  the  forgiveness  that  faith  imparts. 
"What  then?  Are  we  better  than  they? 
No,  in  no  wise :  for  we  have  before  proved 
both  Jews  and  Gentiles,  that  they  are  all 
under  sin.  As  it  is  written,  There  is  none 
righteous,  no,  not  one.  There  is  none  that 
understandeth,  there  is  none  that  seeketh 
after  God.  They  are  all  gone  out  of  the 
way"  (3:9-12).  "For  there  is  no  differ- 
ence between  the  Jew  and  the  Greek:  for 
the  same  Lord  over  all  is  rich  unto  all  that 
call  upon  him.  For  whosoever  shall  call 
upon  the  name  of  the  Lord  shall  be  saved  " 
(10:12-13). 

Gladstone  deplored  what  he  thought  was 
a  waning  sense  of  sin  in  modern  life.  I 
cannot  help  doubting  whether  the  sense  of 
sin  is  actually  lessening.  It  is  receding;  it 
is  passing  lower  beneath  the  surface;  it  is 
diving,    I   think,   rather   than   diminishing. 


160  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

Every  great  crisis  brings  it  to  the  front. 
"  Lest  we  forget ''  was  the  only  note  struck 
at  the  great  Jubilee  that  found  instant  and 
universal  response;  it  is  the  only  note  that 
still  echoes  from  the  diapason  of  national 
acclaim  that  closed  the  triumphs  of  sixty 
years: 

For  heathen  heart  that  puts  her  trust 
In  reeking  tube  and  iron  shard, 

All  valiant  dust  that  builds  on  dust, 
And  guarding,  calls  not  Thee  to  guard. 

For  frantic  boast  and  foolish  word — 

Thy  Mercy  on  Thy  People,  Lord ! 

The  World  War  has  just  drawn  to  an  end 
and  right  has  triumphed  gloriously.  No  one 
can  read  the  thrilling  tidings  that  pour  in 
from  the  Allied  Nations  without  being  pro- 
foundly moved  by  the  absence  of  "  frantic 
boast  and  foolish  word."  No,  when  deep 
calleth  unto  deep,  whether  in  joy  or  sorrow, 
the  Apostle's  appeal  is  vindicated.  There 
is  in  man  a  latent  sense  of  guilt  before  his 
Maker.  Does  not  every  great  preacher, 
whether  Protestant,  Jew,  or  Catholic,  pre- 
suppose it?  Does  he  not  strike  for  it  and 
find  it?  Is  not  every  wide-reaching  revival 
built  upon  it?  Does  not  every  national 
crisis  lay  it  bare  ? 


THE  EPISTLE  TO  THE  EOMANS    161 

When  Paul  speaks,  therefore,  of  justifica- 
tion he  is  not  appealing  to  a  consciousness 
of  guilt  felt  only  by  the  Jew,  trained  in  a 
system  and  ceremonial  designed  to  keep 
alive  a  racial  sensitiveness  to  wrong-doing. 
He  is  appealing  to  a  consciousness  co- 
extensive with  humanity.  When  he  exalts 
faith  as  the  solvent  of  the  sense  of  guilt,  he 
is  not  merely  outlining  a  central  doctrine 
of  the  New  Testament,  nor  is  he  recording 
merely  a  personal  experience.  He  is 
epitomizing  the  whole  history  of  Christi- 
anity. "  Therefore  being  justified  by  faith, 
we  have  peace  with  God  through  our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ :  by  whom  also  we  have  access 
by  faith  into  this  grace  wherein  we  stand, 
and  rejoice  in  hope  of  the  glory  of  God  " 
(5:1-2). 

"And  not  only  so,  but  we  glory  in  tribula- 
tions also :  knowing  that  tribulation  worketh 
patience;  and  patience,  experience;  and  ex- 
perience, hope;  and  hope  maketh  not 
ashamed;  because  the  love  of  God  is  shed 
abroad  in  our  hearts  by  the  Holy  Ghost 
which  is  given  unto  us"  (5:3-5).  I  have 
separated  this  glowing  passage  into  two 
parts  because  each  part  proclaims  a  separate 
victory  of  faith.  Verses  1-2  are  the  final 
summary    of    faith    as    instant    acquittal; 


162  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

verses  3-5  pass  from  justification  to  sancti- 
fication,  from  instant  acquittal  to  increas- 
ing attainment.  The  one  offers  pardon,  the 
other  progress ;  the  one  is  the  gift  of  grace, 
the  other  the  promise  of  growth;  the  one 
says,  *'  You  are  free  from,"  the  other,  ''  You 
are  free  to; "  the  one  assures  the  remission 
of  sin,  the  other  the  remoulding  of  the 
sinner.  Christ  had  become  the  pinnacle  of 
the  Apostle's  effort.  Instead  of  adding 
painfully  year  by  year  this  law  and  that  law 
to  the  number  that  he  might  fairly  be  said  to 
have  obeyed,  he  finds  himself  counting  his 
spiritual  progress  not  by  increasing  obedi- 
ence to  law  but  by  increasing  identification 
with  Christ.  For  addition  from  without 
there  was  substituted  growth  from  within. 
The  journey  to  Damascus  not  only  rescued 
Paul  from  drowning;  it  taught  him  how  to 
swim. 

A  man  may  be  saved  without  sanctifica- 
tion.  The  thief  on  the  Cross  was  justified 
into  Paradise  but  he  was  barred  by  death 
from  the  continuing  process  that  we  call 
sanctification.  Where  there  is  life,  how- 
ever, there  will  be  sanctification  if  justifica- 
tion has  preceded.  Justification  removes 
the  weight  and  gives  play  to  the  spiritual 
forces   that   are   already   pushing  upward. 


THE  EPISTLE  TO  THE  EOMAKS    163 

The  great  passage  in  which  Paul  combines 
the  functions  of  the  two  shows  how  closely 
they  were  related  in  his  own  experience. 
The  history  of  Christianity  has  only  con- 
firmed this  relationship.  "And  not  only  so  '' 
remains  now  as  then  the  brief  reach  from 
the  one  to  the  other. 

Coleridge,  who  called  Romans  "  the  pro- 
foundest  work  in  existence,"  seems  to  me  to 
have  illustrated  the  twin  processes  of  justi- 
fication and  sanctification  in  his  Rime  of  the 
Ancient  Mariner.  The  mariner  had  com- 
mitted a  wanton  sin  in  killing  the  innocent 
albatross.  As  a  symbol  of  his  guilt  the  dead 
bird  is  hung  about  his  neck.  When  salva- 
tion comes 

The  albatross  fell  off,  and  sank 
Like  lead  into  the  sea. 

That  was  justification.  "  Thou  wilt  cast  all 
their  sins  into  the  depths  of  the  sea" 
{Micah  7:19).  Now  comes  the  new  life 
with  its  steady  climb  to  the  new  ideal.  Love 
is  to  be  its  pilot,  prayer  its  staff: 

Farewell,  farewell !  but  this  I  tell 
To  thee,  thou  Wedding-Guest ! 
He  prayeth  well,  who  loveth  well 
Both  man  and  bird  and  beast. 


164  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

He  prayeth  best,  who  loveth  best 
All  things  both  great  and  small ; 
For  the  dear  God  who  loveth  us, 
He  made  and  loveth  all. 

That  is  sanctification. 

IV 
Faith  as  seen  in  its  three  fruits,  emanci- 
pation, justification,  sanctification, — this  is 
the  theme  of  the  Bpistle  to  the  Romans.  The 
picture  is  sketched  against  the  background 
of  the  Mosaic  law^,  and  the  colors  are  drawn 
from  the  Apostle's  own  vivid  and  transform- 
ing experience.  Had  there  been  no  journey- 
to  Damascus,  there  would  have  been  no 
Bpistle  to  the  Romans.  Luke  narrates  the 
journey  as  history  (Acts  9:1-31),  but  to 
Paul  it  was  autobiography.  The  outer  facts 
are  the  units  in  Luke's  story;  the  inner 
transformations  are  the  stages  in  Paul's 
survey.  Faith  is  a  rare  word  in  the  Old 
Testament.  It  is  found  in  Romans  more 
often  than  in  the  Old  Testament  and  the 
four  Gospels  combined.  But  though  the 
word  is  rare  before  the  coming  of  Christ, 
the  thing  itself  is  wrought  into  the  inmost 
texture  of  God's  dealings  with  man.  The 
first  soul  that  found  its  way  to  God  found 
it  by  faith,  and  the  last  will  find  it  where  the 


THE  EPISTLE  TO  THE  EOMANS    165 

first  found  it.  But  it  is  to  Paul  that  we  owe 
the  new  vision.  It  was  he  that  made  clear 
to  human  intelligence  the  oneness  of  out- 
look that  links  Abraham  not  only  with  the 
spiritual  heroes  of  the  New  Testament  but 
with  your  neighbor  or  mine  who  on  yester- 
day or  to-day  passed  with  a  smile  from  home 
or  battle-field  into  the  presence  of  his  God. 
The  Epistle  to  the  Romans  has  made  the  road 
to  Damascus  the  highway  of  Christendom. 


VIII 

THE  EPISTLE  TO  THE  PHILIPPIANS 

I 

THIS  brief  letter  stands  in  a  class 
by  itself.  Paul's  other  letters  to 
churches  are  doctrinal;  this  is  per- 
sonal. If  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans  is  the  ex- 
pression of  Paul's  intellect  at  its  highest 
reach,  the  Epistle  to  the  Philippians  is  the  ex- 
pression of  his  temperament  at  its  normal 
level.  It  is  the  overflow  of  the  Apostle's 
heart  to  the  first  church  that  he  founded  in 
Europe.  There  is  no  censure ;  there  is  only- 
praise  for  their  steadfastness  and  gratitude 
for  their  generosity.  No  dominant  theme 
compels  the  thought,  for  the  Apostle's  mood 
is  reflective,  not  argumentative.  This  letter 
is  Paul  in  study  robe  and  slippers. 

It  is  also  by  common  consent  among  the  last 

letters  that  Paul  wrote.     Death  fronts  him  or 

rather   he    fronts    death.     The    prison    walls 

are  about  him  but,  though  they  shut  in  his 

i66 


THE  EPISTLE  TO  THE  PHILIPPIANS    167 

body,  they  seem  only  a  challenge  to  his 
spirit.  His  mind  passes  in  review  the  inci- 
dents of  other  days,  the  happy  associations 
that  bind  him  to  his  fellow-workers,  and  the 
seeming  misfortunes  that  have  all  "  fallen 
out  rather  unto  the  furtherance  of  the  Gos- 
pel." Most  interesting  of  all,  however,  and 
most  revealing,  are  the  tested  truths  which 
he  is  not  now  planting  but  harvesting. 
Like  Emerson's  Terminus,  Longfellow's 
Morituri  SalutamuSy  Browning's  Epilogue  to 
Asolando,  and  Tennyson's  Crossing  the  Bar, 
this  is  Paul's  valedictory,  his  swan  song. 
It  is  not  formal  and  studied,  its  message 
seeming  to  be  overheard  rather  than  heard. 
He  is  reviewing  and  reappraising  in  quiet- 
ness and  serenity  what  before  he  advo- 
cated or  defended  with  Pauline  ardor  and 
intensity. 

Remember  that  this  is  the  first  time  in  the 
history  of  the  new  faith  that  a  follower  of 
the  crucified  Christ  is  permitted  to  view  the 
approach  of  death  at  close  quarters  and  to 
report  calmly  on  the  result.  The  first  martyr 
had  said  {Acts  7:56):  "Behold,  I  see  the 
heavens  opened  and  the  Son  of  man  stand- 
ing on  the  right  hand  of  God,"  and  Paul 
had  doubtless  heard  him.  But  Stephen's 
words  are  more  a  hail  to  the  life  beyond 


168  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

than  a  farewell  to  this.  If  the  last  hours  of 
other  New  Testament  martyrs  had  been  re- 
corded for  us,  I  do  not  doubt  that  we  should 
have  had  other  testimonies  to  group  with 
the  Bpistle  to  the  Philippians.  But  Paul's  fare- 
well alone  remains,  and  this  gives  to  Philip- 
pians a  kind  of  significance  not  shared  by 
any  other  book  of  the  New  Testament. 

The  words  of  men  as  they  face  into  the 
unknown  have  always  been  invested  with  a 
peculiar  authoritativeness.  For  my  own 
part  the  assertions  of  innocence  that  con- 
demned men  so  often  make  just  before  the 
end  weigh  more  in  my  final  estimate  than 
the  most  detailed  arguments  of  the  prosecu- 
tion. Shakespeare  makes  the  dying  John  of 
Gaunt  give  the  reason: 

O,  but  they  say  the  tongues  of  dying  men 
Enforce  attention  like  deep  harmony. 
Where  words  are  scarce,  they're  seldom  spent 

in  vain, 
For  they  breathe  truth  that  breathe  their 

words  in  pain. 
He  that  no  more  must  say  is  listen'd  more 
Than  they  whom  youth  and  ease  have  taught 

to  glose. 
More  are  men's  ends  mark'd  than  their  lives 

before. 

Poe  in  Tamerlane  adds  a  further  reason : 


THE  EPISTLE  TO  THE  PHILIPPIANS    169 

Father,  I  firmly  do  believe — 

I  know — for  Death  who  comes  for  me 

From  regions  of  the  blest  afar. 

Where  there  is  nothing  to  deceive, 

Hath  left  his  iron  gate  ajar, 

And  rays  of  truth  you  cannot  see 

Are  flashing  through  Eternity. 

Montaigne  believed  that  the  only  way  to 
judge  a  man's  life  was  to  review  it  from 
death  backward:  "Wherefore  at  this  last 
action  all  the  other  actions  of  our  life  ought 
to  be  tried  and  sifted.  'Tis  the  masterday; 
'tis  the  day  that  is  judge  of  all  the  rest;  'tis 
the  day  that  ought  to  be  judge  of  all  my 
foregoing  years.  ...  In  the  judgment 
I  make  of  another  man's  life,  I  always  ob- 
serve how  he  carried  himself  at  his  death."  ' 

II 
We  are  not  left  in  doubt  as  to  how  Paul 
"  carried  himself."  Though  we  do  not  see 
him  at  the  last  moment  we  hear  him  say 
just  before  the  shadow  falls:  "For  me  to 
live  is  Christ,  and  to  die  is  gain.  But  if  I 
live  in  the  flesh,  this  is  the  fruit  of  my  labor: 
yet  what  I  shall  choose  I  wot  not.  For  I 
am  in  a  strait  betwixt  two,  having  a  desire 

'See   the   essay   entitled   "That   Men   are  not  to 
Judge  of  our  Happiness  till  after  Death." 


170  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

to  depart,  and  to  be  with  Christ;  which  is 
far  better.  Nevertheless  to  abide  in  the  flesh 
is  more  needful  for  you  "  (1 :  21-24).  Ham- 
let was  also  *'  in  a  strait  betwixt  two  '*  but 
the  question  is  settled  in  favor  of  life,  not 
that ''  to  abide  in  the  flesh  is  more  needful  " 
for  any  one  else, 

But  that  the  dread  of  something  after  death, 
The  undiscovered  country  from  whose  bourn 
No  traveller  returns,  puzzles  the  will 
And  makes  us  rather  bear  those  ills  we  have 
Than  fly  to  others  that  we  know  not  of. 
Thus  conscience  does  make  cowards  of  us  all. 

No,  conscience  does  not  make  cowards  of 
us  all.  Death  had  been  faced  bravely,  even 
fearlessly,  before  the  coming  of  Christ.  In 
pagan  lands  men  and  women  have  risen 
superior  to  it,  have  even  dared  it.  But 
these  were  rare  souls.  All  honor  to  them ! 
Christianity  did  not  inaugurate  fearlessness 
of  death  but  it  made  common  stock  of  it 
where  before  it  was  preferred  stock.  It 
enabled  your  obscure  neighbor  and  mine  to 
die  with  all  the  calmness  of  Socrates  and 
Marcus  Aurelius  and  with  twice  the  con- 
fidence that  all  is  well.  It  robbed  death  of 
its  tyranny  of  the  vague.  Death  became 
only  going  home.     The  ship  was  not  ven- 


THE  EPISTLE  TO  THE  PHILIPPIANS    171 

turing  into  an  unknown  sea;  it  was  only 
anchoring  in  its  destined  harbor. 

Death  is  not  now  viewed  as  the  terrible 
but  inevitable  engulfment  of  life.  It  is  a 
consummation  innate  in  the  larger  view  of 
life.  If  life  is  probation,  as  the  first  book  of 
the  Bible  proclaims,  if  it  is  the  race-track  of 
the  developing  spirit,  death  is  coronation 
and  goal.  The  lines  of  life  do  not  dip  down 
to  death;  they  converge  upward  to  it. 
Christianity  has  changed  our  attitude  to 
death  because  it  has  changed  our  concep- 
tion of  life.  Even  where  there  is  no  open 
or  acknowledged  faith  in  Christ,  Christi- 
anity has  so  diffused  the  larger  view  of  life 
and  so  enthroned  the  thought  of  an  all-em- 
bracing mercy  that  death  has  ceased  to  be 
but  another  name  for  gruesome  terror. 
But,  whether  recognized  or  not,  it  is  Christ 
that  took  the  sting  from  death  and  the  vic- 
tory from  the  grave.  His  revelation  of  life 
made  death  a  portal  instead  of  a  portent. 
Paul  sums  up  the  twin  thought  when  he 
says :  "  For  me  to  live  is  Christ,  and  to  die 
is  gain."  The  Christ  life  not  only  dissolves 
the  fear  of  death;  it  crystallizes  it  into  the 
certainty  of  something  better. 

But  Paul's  thoughts  are  not  all  nor  even 
chiefly  of  death.     The  life  that  abolishes  the 


172  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

fear  of  death  is  always  primal  in  his  think- 
ing. Every  epistle  that  he  wrote  traverses 
somewhere  the  larger  thought  of  life.  But 
I  wish  to  consider  now  a  quality  in  Paul's 
writings  which  seems  to  have  been  over- 
looked by  his  biographers  but  which  is  as 
truly  autobiographic  as  any  event  or  doc- 
trine associated  with  his  name.  I  mean  his 
equal  mastery  of  what  we  loosely  call  prose 
and  poetry.  More  accurately  it  is  the 
combination  in  his  personality  of  two 
powers,  each  the  beneficiary  of  the  other. 
•Paul  is  usually  thought  of  as  a  great  logician, 
one  whose  mind  played  quickly  over  wide 
areas  of  truth,  found  unity  in  apparent 
diversity,  and  summarized  the  results  in 
terms  of  cubic  measure  rather  than  in  those 
of  linear  or  square  measure.  So  he  was; 
but  if  one  lobe  of  his  brain  was  logic  the 
other  was  song.  He  can  take  a  word  like 
charity  and  literally  sing  its  content  into 
the  consciousness  of  the  world.  If  the 
thirteenth  chapter  of  1  Corinthians  alone  re- 
mained to  us  of  his  writings,  I  should  have 
said  that  at  his  death  the  greatest  lyric  poet 
of  his  day  passed  from  among  men.  There 
is  no  hidden  recess  of  charity  that  is  not 
sung  out  into  the  light  as  by  one  to  whom 
prose  was  an  awkward  tool  and  poetry  the 


THE  EPISTLE  TO  THE  PHILIPPIANS    173 

native  utterance.  His  singing  robes  are  on 
him  again  as  he  chants  the  separate  glories 
of  bodies  celestial  and  bodies  terrestrial 
(1  Corinthians  15:40-57). 

But  every  passage  that  lingers  in  the 
memory  for  the  poetic  beauty  of  its  content 
or  robing  might  be  expunged,  and  FauFs 
mastery  of  thought  and  expression  could  be 
solidly  established  on  the  basis  of  his  rigid 
reasoning  and  penetrating  analysis.  His 
normal  gait  indeed  is  prose,  not  poetry. 
The  difiference,  it  seems  to  me,  is  due  to  a 
difference  of  direction.  In  his  most  closely 
knit  prose  he  moves  dov^nward,  from  the 
greater  to  the  less;  in  the  passages  that  be- 
speak the  poet  he  moves  upward,  from  the 
less  to  the  greater.  Read  again  the  birth 
chant  of  Christian  charity ;  note  the  pinnacle 
ending:  "And  now  abideth  faith,  hope, 
charity,  these  three;  but  the  greatest  of 
these  is  charity"  (1  Corinthians  13:13). 
Listen  again  to  the  solemn  music  of  the 
passage  beginning:  "There  are  also  celestial 
bodies,  and  bodies  terrestrial :  but  the  glory 
of  the  celestial  is  one,  and  the  glory  of  the 
terrestrial  is  another"  (1  Corinthians  15 :40) ; 
note  how  the  thought  and  the  music  bour- 
geon out  together  in  the  final  paean  of  vic- 
tory:  "O  death,  where  is   thy  sting?     O 


174  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

grave,  where  is  thy  victory?  The  sting  of 
death  is  sin;  and  the  strength  of  sin  is  the 
law.  But  thanks  be  to  God  which  giveth  us 
the  victory  through  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.'' 

Read  now  the  warrior  passage  in  Bphe- 
sians  (6: 13-17).  This  is  not  poetry  but  it 
is  masterly  prose.  It  begins  with  "  the 
whole  armor  of  God  "  and  ends  with  "  the 
sword  of  the  Spirit."  It  passes  downward 
from  an  armory  to  a  single  piece  of  armor. 
Had  Paul  begun  with  **  the  sword  of  the 
Spirit  "  and  moved  upward  and  outward  to 
**  the  whole  armor  of  God/'  his  phrasing 
would  have  been  different.  The  same 
weapons  and  the  same  functions  might  have 
been  mentioned  but  the  characterizations 
would  have  been  cumulative  in  beauty  and 
vividness,  for  his  poetic  manner  would  have 
replaced  his  prose  manner. 

Nowhere  are  the  two  movements  more 
clearly  illustrated  than  in  Philippians  2 : 5-11 : 
"  Let  this  mind  be  in  you  which  was  also 
in  Christ  Jesus :  who,  being  in  the  form  of 
God,  thought  it  not  robbery  to  be  equal 
with  God:  but  made  himself  of  no  reputa- 
tion, and  took  upon  him  the  form  of  a  serv- 
ant, and  was  made  in  the  likeness  of  men: 
and  being  found  in  fashion  as  a  man,  he 
humbled  himself  and  became  obedient  unto 


THE  EPISTLE  TO  THE  PHILIPPIANS   175 

death,  even  the  death  of  the  cross.  Where- 
fore God  also  hath  highly  exalted  him,  and 
given  him  a  name  which  is  above  every 
name :  that  at  the  name  of  Jesus  every  knee 
should  bow,  of  things  in  heaven,  and  things 
in  earth,  and  things  under  the  earth ;  and  that 
every  tongue  should  confess  that  Jesus  Christ 
is  Lord,  to  the  glory  of  God  the  Father."  Be- 
tween Christ  '*  in  the  form  of  God  "  to  Christ 
suffering  "  the  death  of  the  cross  "  there  is 
compressed  in  logical  and  well  ordered  prose 
the  entire  teaching  of  the  New  Testament. 
It  is  a  biography  of  Christ  compressed  into 
a  sentence,  and  into  the  biography  is  woven 
the  central  teaching  of  Christ's  life.  The 
movement  is  downward,  and  the  thinker  in 
Paul  predominates.  But  at  "  Wherefore  " 
the  movement  is  upward  from  Christ  on  the 
Cross  to  Christ  on  the  throne  of  the  uni- 
verse, and  the  seer  in  Paul  speaks. 

Browning,  too,  was  thinker  and  seer. 
But  in  later  years  the  prose  manner  of  the 
thinker  so  invaded  the  vision  of  the  seer 
that  nearly  one-half  of  his  work,  that  written 
after  1870,  added  little  if  anything  to  his 
reputation.  But  Philippians  shows  that  Paul 
retained  his  dualism  of  endowment  to  the 
etid.  The  passage  quoted  not  only  sum- 
marizes the  Christ  that  was  and  the  Christ 


176  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

that  is  to  be ;  it  conjoins  also  the  two  Pauls. 
To  know  this  man  you  must  not  only  enter 
the  doorways  of  his  intellect;  you  must  look 
through  the  windows  of  his  spirit.  No 
biography  of  him  is  worth  while  that 
neglects  to  indicate  this  double  endowment 
or  fails  to  trace  the  deepened  inflow  and 
outflow  of  truth  that  resulted  therefrom. 

But  Philippians  shows  still  another  angle 
from  which  to  view  the  personality  of  its 
author.  Consider  for  a  moment  the  vast 
significance  of  these  words :  "  Brethren,  I 
count  not  myself  to  have  apprehended:  but 
this  one  thing  I  do,  forgetting  those  things 
which  are  behind,  and  reaching  forth  unto 
those  things  which  are  before,!  press  toward 
the  mark  for  the  prize  of  the  high  calling 
of  God  in  Christ  Jesus  "  (3: 13-14).  That 
passage  seems  to  me  to  give  vitality  and 
boundlessness  to  every  doctrine  that  Paul 
has  championed.  Had  he  reported  differ- 
ently, had  he  counted  himself  as  having  ap- 
prehended, I  for  one  should  have  felt  that 
power  had  gone  forever  from  every  page  of 
his  writings.  The  man  who  feels  that  he 
has  caught  up  with  his  ideal  compels  me  to 
believe  that  his  ideal  was  a  very  poor  sort 
of  thing  after  all.  I  thought  it  was  a  ladder 
with  its  summit  in  the  skies.     But  he  proves 


THE  EPISTLE  TO  THE  PHILIPPIANS    177 

that  it  was  only  a  rocking-chair.  Passage 
after  passage  of  St.  Paul  would  have  to  be 
reinterpreted  and  put  on  a  lower  plane  of 
appeal  if  he  had  proclaimed  himself  as 
sitting  astride  the  goal.  Writings  that  I 
had  thought  belonged  to  the  literature  of 
power  would  now  have  to  be  classed  as  be- 
longing only  to  the  literature  of  knowledge ; 
appeals  that  seemed  to  release  limitless 
energy  of  pursuit  would  have  their  push  and 
urge  taken  out  of  them;  tracts  of  effort 
where  the  "  no  fence  law  "  seemed  to  hold 
would  now  be  revealed  as  divided  and 
hemmed  in;  waters  that  I  thought  had  the 
tang  and  challenge  of  the  ocean  would  now 
smack  of  the  bounded  lake  or  stagnant  pool 
Paul  must  have  known  that  his  confession 
might  be  used  against  him.  I  have  no  doubt 
that  it  was.  The  finished  and  finite  clods  of 
his  day,  the  legalists  whom  he  had  fought 
on  this  very  issue,  must  have  read  in  his 
words  a  confession  of  defeat  for  himself  and 
of  weakness  for  the  system  that  he  repre- 
sented. But  his  frank  admission  needs  no 
defense  now.  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  defined 
his  own  ideal  thus :  "  The  sight  never  be- 
held it,  nor  has  the  hand  expressed  it;  it  is 
an  idea  residing  in  the  breast  of  the  artist 
which  he  is  always  laboring  to  impart  and 


178  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

which  he  dies  at  last  without  imparting." 
If  this  is  true  of  the  artist  it  is  doubly  true 
of  the  man  who  is  attempting  to  mould 
character.  Christianity  is  built  on  an  un- 
attainable ideal.  When  Paul  said,  "  I  count 
not  myself  to  have  apprehended,"  he  did 
more  than  prove  his  own  greatness  of  soul; 
he  touched  with  a  certain  endlessness  every 
letter  that  he  had  written.  He  made  self- 
gratulation  and  smug  complacency  forever 
aliens  from  the  commonwealth  of  Israel  and 
strangers  from  the  covenants  of  promise. 

Ill 
Bruno  Bauer  found  the  Bpistle  to  the  Philip- 
pians  characterized  by  "  a  monotonous 
repetition  of  what  had  already  been  said, 
by  a  want  of  any  deep  and  masterly  con- 
nection of  ideas,  and  by  a  certain  poverty 
of  thought."  This  is  a  kind  of  criticism  of 
which  we  are  to  hear  far  less  in  the  future. 
Strange  that  it  has  masqueraded  so  long  as 
scholarly  and  illuminating.  Are  good-bye 
letters  to  be  weighed  in  the  same  scales  with 
arguments  and  orations?  Was  Paul  noth- 
ing but  a  controversialist?  After  rearing  the 
pillars  of  the  vast  structure  that  we  call 
Christian  thought,  could  he  not  sit  for  a 
moment  within  its   walls   and  review  the 


THE  EPISTLE  TO  THE  PHILIPPIAI^S    179 

work  of  his  hand?  Had  he  no  personality? 
Is  not  his  survey  of  what  he  had  tried  to  be 
and  do  of  priceless  value  in  appraising  the 
man  that  stood  behind  the  disputant? 

Let  us  put  over  against  Bauer*s  inane 
comment  a  recent  cablegram  from  Paris: 
**  One  gratefully  appreciated  service  done 
by  the  workers  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  in  France 
is  to  bring  relatives  to  the  bedsides  of  dying 
or  fatally  wounded  soldiers."  Paul  was  not 
dying,  nor  was  he  fatally  wounded.  But  he 
was  in  the  shadow  of  death  and  he  knew  it. 
This  letter  and  this  letter  alone  is  the  pass- 
port to  his  presence. 


IX 
REVELATION 

I 

NO  book  of  the  Bible  seems  to  me  to 
possess  as  much  unreleased  power 
as  the  book  of  Revelation,  Written 
at  a  time  when  the  struggUng  churches  were 
ringed  around  with  enemies,  when  the 
Roman  Empire  had  leagued  itself  against 
them,  when  the  future  seemed  impenetrably 
dark,  this  book  sounds  a  note  of  confidence 
so  resonant  and  dauntless  that  the  victory 
seemed  already  half  won.  It  is  more  than 
a  piece  of  writing;  it  belongs  rather  to  the 
realm  of  deed.  It  is  not  so  much  a  trumpet 
calling  to  battle  for  right  as  a  sword  un- 
sheathed till  right  be  won.  Handicapped 
though  it  has  been  by  perverse  interpreta- 
tion it  has  done  more  than  any  other  one 
book  to  halt  the  old  idea  that  the  Golden 
Age  is  behind  us.  When  this  book  was 
written  all  the  great  world  literatures  had 
represented  history  as  only  a  steep  descent 
from  good  through  bad  to  worst.  From 
i8o 


EEYELATTON  181 

Hesiod  to  Virgil  there  is  hardly  a  Greek  or 
Roman  poet  who  does  not  look  longingly 
back  to  the  remote  age  of  painlessness  and 
peace;  there  is  hardly  one  who  does  not 
bewail  his  own  fate  in  being  born  into  the 
Iron  Age  of  unrequited  labor  and  unattain- 
able hope.  There  was  no  forward  view. 
Virgil  tried  for  a  moment  to  check  the 
despair  of  his  age  by  proclaiming  a  second 
Golden  Age.  But  by  the  time  the  ^neid 
was  written  he  too  had  succumbed  to  the 
national  depression  and  instead  of  another 
Golden  Age  he  can  only  hope  for  a  reign  of 
comparative  peace. 

As  long  as  the  sun  is  in  front  of  us  the 
shadows  fall  behind,  but  when  the  sun  is 
behind  us  the  shadows  loom  before.  It  is 
in  the  light  of  this  truth  that  we  must  try  to 
evaluate  the  service  of  Revelatiom.  It  placed 
a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth  far  in  front, 
as  something  yet  to  be;  it  substituted  pros- 
pect for  retrospect;  it  sent  out  a  call  to  the 
spiritual  forces  of  the  world  to  mobilize  for 
a  vast  constructive  and  reconstructive  ef- 
fort; it  lifted  men's  minds  to  a  vision  of 

That  God,  which  ever  lives  and  loves, 
One  God,  one  law,  one  element. 
And  one  far-off  divine  event, 

To  which  the  whole  creation  moves. 


182  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

But  there  is  still  unreleased  power  in  the 
book;  it  is  still  functioning  below  its  maxi- 
mum, because  it  has  fallen  upon  a  time  when 
men  eddy  around  its  minor  obscurities  in- 
stead of  moving  with  its  great  marching 
current.  Did  you  never  make  the  height 
bear  the  burden  of  the  plane?  Did  you 
never  call  upon  the  future  to  Uft  you  over 
the  present?  "What  I  do  thou  knowest 
not  now,  but  thou  shalt  know  hereafter." 
The  Christian's  hereafter  has  ever  been 
physician  to  his  now. 

Yesterday  and  to-day 

Have  been  heavy  with  labor  and  sorrow, 
I  should  faint  if  I  did  not  see 

The  day  that  is  after  to-morrow. 

Lieutenant  Coningsby  Dawson  writes  from 
the  horror  of  the  trenches  to  his  father,  the 
author  of  these  lines,  and  adds:  "There's 
that  last  verse  of  your  poem  which  prophe- 
sied utterly  the  spirit  in  which  we  men  at 
the  Front  are  fighting  to-day."  That  last 
verse  is: 

And  for  me,  with  spirit  elate 

The  mire  and  the  fog  I  press  through, 

For  Heaven  shines  under  the  cloud 
Of  the  day  that  is  after  to-morrow. 

That  is  a  glimpse  of  the  height  at  which 


EEVELATION  183 

Revelation  moves;  it  is  a  wafture  from  the 
airs  that  one  must  breathe  who  essays  to 
traverse  these  uplands  of  St.  John.  Reve- 
lation is  the  Christian  epic  of  **  the  day  that 
is  after  to-morrow."  In  its  pages  one  may 
hear  voices  that  will  sound  forever  in  his 
ears  and  see  far-moving  lights  that  will  play 
forever  about  his  feet  as  he  presses  pain- 
fully, it  may  be,  but  confidently  upward. 

The  commentators,  however,  view  the 
book  otherwise.  Its  swift-flowing  central 
current  has  been  so  stayed  and  deflected  by 
them  as  to  be  hardly  discernible  in  their 
pages.  Like  the  book  of  Jonah,  the  book  of 
Revelation  has  suffered  much  from  piecemeal 
interpretation.  Take  the  words  *'  a  thou- 
sand years  "  which  occur  in  the  first  part  of 
the  twentieth  chapter.  If  the  reader  has 
felt  even  for  a  moment  the  tense  elevation 
of  mood  at  which  these  words  were  written 
he  will  not  be  tempted  to  construe  them  as 
meaning  exactly  ten  hundred.  When  the 
author  of  Daniel,  lifted  to  an  equal  elevation, 
cried  out :  "  Ten  thousand  times  ten  thou- 
sand stood  before  him  "  (7 :  10),  no  one  feels 
inclined  to  stop  and  calculate  the  exact 
product  indicated.  When  Peter  asked  Christ 
whether  he  should  forgive  an  offending 
brother  seven  times,  the  reply  was:  "I  say 


184  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

not  unto  thee,  Until  seven  times :  but,  Until 
seventy  times  seven"  (Matthew  18:22). 
But  does  any  one  contend  that  the  Master 
meant  just  four  hundred  and  ninety?  In 
the  book  of  Revelation,  hov^ever,  the  "  thou- 
sand years  "  has  divided  critics  into  warring 
camps;  it  has  thrust  into  our  language  such 
strange  v^ords  as  "  chiliasm  "  and  "  chiliast," 
"premiilennialist  "  and  ''postmillennialism/' 
not  one  of  w^hich  has  a  right  to  be  alive. 
And,  worse  still,  the  disproportionate 
amount  of  thought  and  space  given  to  the 
phrase  leaves  none  for  the  larger  dynamic 
message  that  the  book  proclaims. 

Now  whatever  else  you  bring  to  the  won- 
derful book  that  so  fitly  closes  the  canon  of 
Scripture — and  none  other  could  close  it — 
do  not  bring  this  kind  of  servile  literalism. 
It  will  seal  every  passage  for  you  as  with 
the  Apostle's  own  seven  seals.  Bring  every 
ounce  of  vision,  of  pictorial  faculty,  of  in- 
terpretative and  constructive  imagination 
that  you  possess.  The  result  will  be  a  per- 
manent addition  to  faith  and  hope  as  well  as 
to  that  exaltation  of  spirit  in  which  both 
faith  and  hope  find  their  coronation. 

II 

Rruelation  shows  peculiar  care  in  its  struc*- 


EEYELATIOH  185 

tural  divisions.  Let  us  call  these  the 
Church  Hesitant  (chapters  1-3),  the  Church 
Militant  (chapters  4-20),  and  the  Church 
Triumphant  (chapters  21-22).  The  seven 
churches  addressed  in  the  first  division — 
Ephesus,  Smyrna,  Pergamos,  Thyatira, 
Sardis,  Philadelphia,  and  Laodicea — stand 
of  course  for  all  of  the  churches  then 
founded  that  had  Christ  "  in  the  midst " 
(1:13).  The  number  seven  gave  the  He- 
brew writer  an  instrument  of  peculiar 
power.  It  enabled  him  to  symbolize  not 
only  completeness  in  number  but  complete- 
ness in  excellence.  It  means  here  not  only 
all  the  churches  that  had  Christ  in  them  but 
also  the  best  in  each.  Its  connotation  was 
quantitative  and  quahtative,  extensive  and 
intensive.  The  churches,  however,  are  not 
merely  forewarned  that  a  long  period  of 
struggle  is  before  them.  These  first  three 
chapters,  in  fact,  contain  but  Uttle  warning 
and  but  little  formal  announcement.  They 
constitute  a  commission.  A  new  era  in 
world  history  is  dawning,  an  era  unlike  any 
that  has  gone  before.  The  church  is  be- 
ginning its  organized  career.  Hitherto  its 
efiforts  have  been  scattered  and  unrelated. 
Now  they  are  to  be  massed  and  integrated. 
Like  seven  golden  candlesticks,  the  seven 


186  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

churches  point  upward  and  burn  as  with 
one  light.  Above  all,  Christ  is  "in  the 
midst."  But  the  opposition  is  organized 
also  and  on  a  far  vaster  scale  than  the 
churches.  No  wonder  there  was  hesitation 
and  even  blank  dismay. 

But  the  churches  are  not  to  be  spectators; 
they  are  not  to  be  merely  one  of  the  con- 
testants for  right.  They  are  the  only  con- 
testants for  right.  They  constitute  all  of 
one  side  in  the  conflict.  The  destiny  of  the 
world  is  with  them  because  with  Christ  "  in 
the  midst "  they  are  the  sole  commissioned 
defenders  of  the  things  that  Christ's  pres- 
ence confers.  We  speak  of  history  as  the 
conflict  of  individualism  and  institutional- 
ism,  of  democracy  and  autocracy,  of  ideal- 
ism and  materialism ;  and  the  saying  is  true, 
in  a  way.  But,  according  to  St.  John,  there 
is  a  more  elemental  dualism  than  any  of 
these.  See  deep  enough  and  you  will  see 
right  on  one  side  and  wrong  on  the  other. 

Lowell  sums  it  up : 


History's  pages  but  record 
One  death-grapple  in  the  darkness  'twixt  old 

systems  and  the  Word ; 
Truth  forever  on  the  scaffold,  Wrong  for- 
ever on  the  throne, — 


REVELATION  187 

Yet  that  scaffold  sways  the  future,  and  behind 

the  dim  unknown, 
Standeth  God  within  the  shadow,  keeping 

watch  above  His  own. 

"  History  is  philosophy  teaching  by  ex- 
amples,'* said  Bolingbroke.  "  Not  so," 
says  St.  John ;  *'  history  is  now  going  to  be 
Christ  in  the  church  subduing  the  world 
unto  himself."  The  churches  are  to  con- 
stitute the  sole  partnership  of  right.  They 
are  to  make  history  by  protecting  it  from 
the  forces  that  would  unmake  it.  There  is 
a  striking  analogy  between  St.  John's 
thought  and  that  of  President  Wilson  in 
his  Manchester  speech  of  December  30, 
1918:  "It  is  a  fine  correlation  of  the  influ- 
ence of  duty  and  right,"  he  said,  "  that  right 
is  the  equipoise  and  balance  of  society. 
And  so,  when  we  analyze  the  present  situa- 
tion and  the  future  that  we  now  have  to 
mold  and  control,  it  seems  to  me  that  there 
is  no  other  thought  than  that  that  can  guide 
us."  Both,  you  will  notice,  stood  at  the  part- 
ing of  the  ways;  both  were  seeking  what 
was  permanent  and  constructive;  and  both 
found  in  right  the  sole  clue  to  the  maze  that 
encompassed  them. 

To  regard  this  portion  of  Revelation  as  a 
mere  announcement  to  interested  spectators 


188  KEYIs^OTE  STUDIES 

is  to  miss  the  challenge  of  the  whole  book. 
It  is  the  church  that  is  to  do  the  fighting. 
It  is  the  fighting  itself  that  is  to  constitute 
the  second  and  longest  division  of  the  book. 
It  is  the  ultimate  victory  issuing  in  a  new 
and  redeemed  world  that  is  to  form  the 
culminating  vision  with  which  the  Bible 
ends.  The  noise  of  battle  can  be  already 
heard  in  the  solemn  promises  that  are  made 
to  each  church.  To  the  church  in  Ephesus : 
''  To  him  that  overcometh  will  I  give  to  eat 
of  the  tree  of  life,  which  is  in  the  midst  of  the 
paradise  of  God'*  (2:7);  to  the  church  in 
Smyrna :  "  He  that  overcometh  shall  not  be 
hurt  of  the  second  death"  (2:11);  to  the 
church  in  Pergamos :  "  To  him  that  over- 
cometh will  I  give  to  eat  of  the  hidden 
manna,  and  will  give  him  a  white  stone,  and 
in  the  stone  a  new  name  written,  which  no 
man  knoweth  saving  he  that  receiveth  it  '* 
(2 :  17) ;  to  the  church  in  Thyatira :  "And  he 
that  overcometh,  and  keepeth  my  words 
unto  the  end,  to  him  will  I  give  power  over 
the  nations  "  (2:  26);  to  the  church  in  Sar- 
dis :  "  He  that  overcometh,  the  same  shall 
be  clothed  in  white  raiment;  and  I  will  not 
blot  out  his  name  out  of  the  book  of  life, 
but  I  will  confess  his  name  before  my 
Father,  and  before  his  angels"  (3:5);  to 


EEVELATION  189 

the  church  in  Philadelphia :  "  Him  that  over- 
cometh  will  I  make  a  pillar  in  the  temple  of 
my  God,  and  he  shall  go  no  more  out :  and  I 
will  write  upon  him  the  name  of  my  God, 
and  the  name  of  the  city  of  my  God,  which 
is  new  Jerusalem,  which  cometh  down  out 
of  heaven  from  my  God:  and  I  will  write 
upon  him  my  new  name"  (3:12);  and  to 
the  church  in  Laodicea:  "To  him  that 
overcometh  will  I  grant  to  sit  with  me  in 
my  throne,  even  as  I  also  overcame,  and 
am  set  down  with  my  Father  in  his  throne  " 
(3:22). 

Ill 

"After  this  I  looked,  and,  behold,  a  door 
was  opened  in  heaven:  and  the  first  voice 
which  I  heard  was  as  it  were  of  a  trumpet 
talking  with  me;  which  said.  Come  up 
hither,  and  I  will  shew  thee  things  which 
must  be  hereafter"  (4:1).  Thus  begins 
the  vision  of  the  Church  Militant.  The 
battle  is  on  now,  and  though  we  see  through 
a  glass  darkly,  we  at  least  see.  Do  we  not 
feel,  too,  and  feel  all  the  more  vividly  be- 
cause of  the  semi-darkness  that  is  about  us? 
The  Apostle  is  sketching  in  broad  and 
dramatic  outline  the  interim  between  his 
time  and  that  yet  remote  period  when  there 


190  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

shall  emerge  the  new  heaven  and  the  new 
earth, — 

There  where  law,  life,  joy,  impulse  are  one 
thing. 

The  very  predominance  of  the  number 
seven  seems  evidence  to  me  that  the  seer 
is  not  attempting  to  chronicle  in  advance 
any  definite  historical  facts  in  history,  like 
the  rise  of  the  CathoHc  Church,  the  invasion 
of  the  Turks,  the  havoc  of  the  French  Revo- 
lution, and  what  not.  He  is  dealing  with 
types  of  events  under  which  definite  events 
may  be  grouped,  it  is  true,  but  as  illustra- 
tions rather  than  as  foreseen  fulfillments; 
he  is  dealing  with  masses  of  fact  fused  by 
vision  into  essential  unity;  his  eye  is  not  on 
the  fact  or  event  in  itself  but  on  the  genus 
that  includes  it;  he  is  building  compart- 
ments into  which  facts,  events,  causes,  and 
processes  may  be  fitted  as  the  centuries 
pass. 

There  are  five  of  these  major  compart- 
ments waiting  to  be  occupied  and  illustrated 
by  the  unfolding  of  time.  Each  compart- 
ment may  hold  innumerable  events,  and  one 
great  event  or  process  may  radiate  its  ef- 
fects into  each  compartment.  (1)  The 
seven  seals  (5: 1-8;  1)  typify  the  revelation 


EEYELATION  191 

of  vast  secrets  that  the  future  holds  in  store ; 
(2)  the  seven  trumpets  (8:2-11: 19)  herald 
the  announcement  of  world  changes;  (3)  the 
seven  living  things  (12:  1-13: 18)  are  types 
of  character  that  on  a  titanic  scale  will  prove 
formative  for  good  or  evil;  (4)  the  seven 
vials  of  wrath  (15:1-16:21)  are  plagues 
that  cause  the  extinction  or  modification  of 
races  and  nations;  (5)  the  seven  dooms 
(17:1-20:15)  are  judgments  of  God  cul- 
minating in  the  final  overthrow  of  evil 
These  five  factors  do  not  correspond,  it  is 
true,  to  the  categories  that  modern  his- 
torians employ.  Why  should  they?  St. 
John  was  not  writing  history.  He  was 
glimpsing  it.  He  was  prefiguring  its  essen- 
tial processes.  If  his  method  is  not  that  of 
a  Macaulay  or  Stubbs  it  is  strikingly  Hke 
that  of  a  Carlyle  or  Hugo. 

It  is  still  more  like  that  of  the  poets.    Here 
is  Tennyson's  Apocalypse.     He  longs — 

To  sleep  through  terms  of  mighty  wars, 

And  wake  on  science  grown  to  more. 
On  secrets  of  the  brain,  the  stars, 

As  wild  as  aught  of  fairy  lore ; 
And  all  that  else  the  years  will  show. 

The  Poet- forms  of  stronger  hours, 
The  vast  Republics  that  may  grow. 

The  Federations  and  the  Po^yers : 


192  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

Titanic  forces  taking  birth 

In  divers  seasons,  divers  climes ; 

For  we  are  ancients  of  the  earth. 
And  in  the  morning  of  the  times. 


According  to  Tennyson  the  future  is  to 
witness  (1)  w^ars,  (2)  a  crescent  science, 
(3)  new  discoveries  in  psychology  and 
astronomy,  (4)  nobler  forms  of  poetry,  and 
(5)  a  vast  extension  of  democracy.  These 
are  the  five  main  compartments  which,  the 
laureate  thought,  the  coming  ages  would 
fill, — had  indeed  already  begun  to  fill  before 
he  died.  If  you  could  congratulate  Tenny- 
son on  his  successful  prophecy  of  the  World 
War  and  on  his  provision  for  its  effects 
in  compartments  1  and  2  and  5,  I  think  that 
his  reply  would  be :  *'  I  did  not  prophesy  the 
World  War:  I  only  built  the  compartments 
in  which  you  may  house  its  multiform  re- 
sults." And  a  similar  answer  would  be 
made,  I  believe,  by  St.  John,  if  you  could 
question  him  about  any  of  the  epochal 
events  that  he  is  currently  thought  to  have 
foreseen  and  foretold  even  in  minute  detail. 

Instead,  then,  of  the  "  futurist  "  or  the 
"  preterist  "  view  of  Revelation  let  us  try  the 
type  or  compartment  view.  It  alone,  I  be- 
lieve, will  save  Revelatimi  to  us  as  a  great  for- 


BEVELATION  193 

ward-looking  and  forward-propelling  vision. 
If  John  was  describing  in  advance  any  of 
the  great  events  that  we  call  history,  why, 
when  you  have  estabhshed  the  identification 
to  your  satisfaction,  that  part  of  the  book 
becomes  for  you  extinct.  You  may  blow 
out  the  light,  for  it  can  serve  you  no  longer ; 
retrospect  takes  the  place  of  prospect,  but 
retrospect  has  neither  the  urge  nor  the 
pulse  of  prospect.  On  the  other  hand,  if 
John  was  describing  only  past  or  contempo- 
rary events,  he  would  be  getting  no  nearer 
to  his  goal  at  the  end.  The  new  heaven 
and  the  new  earth  that  close  his  vision  would 
have  no  avenues  leading  to  them.  The 
mighty  conflicts  of  the  Church  Militant 
would  be  what  Carlyle  somewhere  calls  ''  all 
action  and  no  go."  Do  not  the  trumpet 
words  placed  at  the  very  beginning  of  this 
section,  "  I  will  shew  thee  things  which 
must  be  hereafter,"  preclude  the  preterist 
view? 

And  these  things  will  always  be  "  here- 
after." John's  symbols  face  future-ward, 
not  backward.  Events  pass  through  them 
in  the  march  from  future  to  past,  but  the 
symbols  are  not  thereby  exhausted.  Mirrors 
are  not  worn  out  by  reflecting  passing 
pageants.     Formulas  do  not   age  by  use; 


194  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

they  vindicate  afresh  their  vitality  and  their 
service  whenever  the  elements  combine  in 
right  proportions;  they,  too,  face  forward, 
ever  forward.  What  was  vision  to  John 
should  be  vision  to  us.  Make  of  his  vision 
a  puzzle  of  the  past  and  what  was  meant 
to  be  a  rising  sun,  rising  till  it  blend  with 
the  perfect  day,  becomes  a  setting  sun, 
heralding  a  deeper  darkness. 

**  It  is  this  sense  of  the  coming  day,"  says 
Dr.  Jowett,  "  which  gives  the  soul  power  to 
endure.  It  is  this  sense  of  the  future  which 
we  so  much  need.  Our  life  is  bigger  than 
the  passing  hour.  We  must  relate  to-day  to 
to-morrow.  The  sharp,  destructive  sweeps 
of  the  plowshare,  shearing  to  the  roots  of 
ten  thousand  flowers,  must  be  related  to  the 
coming  golden  grain.  We  must  link  the 
bare  overturned  clods  with  the  harvest 
home!  *  We  are  saved  by  hope.'  Brave, 
consecrated  men  and  women,  devoting  their 
strength  to  holy  causes,  are  not  moving  in 
blind  and  futile  circles ;  they  are  moving  on 
God's  road  to  ever-brightening  issues. 
*  The  path  of  the  just  is  as  the  shining  light 
that  shineth  more  and  more  unto  the  per- 
fect day.'  It  is  our  wisdom  to  live  and 
move  and  have  our  being  in  the  power  of 
that  glorious  expectation." 


EEVELATION  195 

The  comfort  that  this  book  brings  and 
has  brought  in  increasing  measure  during 
the  heavy  years  that  are  just  passed  is  due 
to  the  completeness  of  the  vision  that  it  un- 
folds. All  other  visions  seem  but  rivulets 
beside  it.  Beginning  with  the  church  as  it 
was  in  John's  day,  passing  in  quick  review 
the  kinds  of  spiritual  struggle  that  must  be 
expected,  it  ends  with  a  -victory  so  vividly 
foreseen  and  so  satisfyingly  phrased  that 
the  reader  gains  a  new  view  of  the  meaning 
of  history  and  a  new  confidence  in  the  un- 
conquerableness  of  Christianity.  However 
vague  or  indeterminate  the  processes  are 
that  lie  between  the  Church  Hesitant  and 
the  Church  Triumphant,  God  is  in  them  and 
over  them.  They  are  struggles  between 
essential  right  and  essential  wrong  and 
Christ  is  in  the  midst  of  His  Church.  No 
one  can  read  this  battle  of  the  symbols  with- 
out feeling  the  onrush  of  mighty  forces  con- 
trolled to  good  and  made  convergent  upon 
one  sure  goal.  The  imagery  may  not  be 
Western,  it  may  not  be  modern;  but  it  is 
universal  in  its  revelation  of  God  over  all 
and  victory  at  the  end.  There  is  no  mis- 
caking  it,  unless  one  hold  in  leash  every 
prompting  of  devotion,  every  beckoning  of 
his    spiritual    imagination,    and    bring    to 


196  KEYNOTE  STUDIES 

bear  only  his  analytical  and  puzzle-solving 

faculties. 

IV 
Not  the  trumpets  but  the  flutes  play  here, 
for  the  Church  Triumphant  emerges  in  still- 
ness, in  peace,  in  joy  as  uncompassable  in 
words  as  it  is  unfathomable  in  depth.  As 
the  aged  Apostle  pens  the  last  verses  of  the 
Bible,  his  thought  turns  back  to  the  first 
verse:  *' In  the  beginning  God  created  the 
heaven  and  the  earth."  Now  he  writes: 
"And  I  saw  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth : 
for  the  first  heaven  and  the  first  earth  were 
passed  away"  (21:1).  But  the  sea  still 
writhes  around  him  on  Patmos  Isle  and  the 
sea  is  the  symbol  of  death,  of  suffering,  of 
diverse  languages,  of  nations  antagonized 
by  its  dividing  waves.  The  sea  is  not  now 
water  to  St.  John;  it  is  waste  and  discord: 
"And  there  was  no  more  sea  "  (21 :  1).  The 
age-long  contests  of  Athens,  Rome,  and 
Jerusalem  are  forever  past  but  it  was  Jeru- 
salem that  embodied  the  immortal  life: 
"And  I  John  saw  the  holy  city,  new  Jeru- 
salem, coming  down  from  God  out  of 
heaven,  prepared  as  a  bride  adorned  for  her 
husband.  And  I  heard  a  great  voice  out  of 
heaven  saying.  Behold  the  tabernacle  of  God 
is  with  men,  and  they  shall  be  his  people, 


KEVELATION  197 

and  God  himself  shall  be  with  them,  and  be 
their  God.  And  God  shall  wipe  away  all 
tears  from  their  eyes;  and  there  shall  be  no 
more  death,  neither  sorrow,  nor  crying-, 
neither  shall  there  be  any  more  pain :  for  the 
former  things  are  passed  away"  (21:2-4). 
But  the  temple, — has  it  not  been  rebuilt  and 
restored?  "And  I  saw  no  temple  therein: 
for  the  Lord  God  Almighty  and  the  Lamb 
are  the  temple  of  it"  (21:22). 

Can  the  author  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  re- 
main long  at  this  altitude  without  having 
recourse  to  light  and  life,  those  great  words 
whose  spiritual  service  he  has  almost  pre- 
empted? "And  the  city  had  no  need  of  the 
sun,  neither  of  the  moon,  to  shine  in  it:  for 
the  glory  of  God  did  lighten  it,  and  the 
Lamb  is  the  light  thereof"  (21:23).  This 
is  the  profoundest  word  on  light  that  the 
Bible  contains;  having  served  its  ministry 
it  is  regathered  into  the  orbed  splendor  of 
which  it  was  but  a  pilgrim  ray. 

But  Hfe  remains,  life  quickened,  life  in- 
tensified, life  glorified;  and  with  the  flow  of 
the  river  of  life,  bordered  by  the  tree  of  life, 
the  Apostle  nears  the  close  of  his  vision: 
"And  he  shewed  me  a  pure  river  of  water 
of  life,  clear  as  crystal,  proceeding  out  of  the 
throne  of  God  and  of  the  Lamb.     In  the 


198  e:ey:n:ote  studies 

midst  of  the  street  of  it,  and  on  either  side 
of  the  river,  was  there  the  tree  of  Hfe,  which 
bare  twelve  manner  of  fruits,  and  yielded 
her  fruit  every  month ;  and  the  leaves  of  the 
tree  were  for  the  healing  of  the  nations. 
And  there  shall  be  no  more  curse :  but  the 
throne  of  God  and  of  the  Lamb  shall  be  in 
it;  and  his  servants  shall  serve  him:  and 
they  shall  see  his  face;  and  his  name  shall  be 
in  their  foreheads.  And  there  shall  be  no 
night  there;  and  they  need  no  candles, 
neither  light  of  the  sun;  for  the  Lord  God 
giveth  them  light:  and  they  shall  reign  for- 
ever and  ever  "  (22 : 1-5). 

With  the  passing  of  the  sun,  Genesis  seems 
again  to  recur.  Its  central  truths  were 
creation  and  probation.  But  creation  has 
been  recreated.  Has  probation  also  run  its 
appointed  course?  "He  that  is  unjust,  let 
him  be  unjust  still:  and  he  which  is  filthy, 
let  him  be  filthy  still:  and  he  that  is  right- 
eous, let  him  be  righteous  still :  and  he  that 
is  holy,  let  him  be  holy  still  "  (22  :  11).  One 
can  almost  hear  the  words,  "  Depart  from 
me,"  words  as  irrevocable  as  doom,  words 
that  in  themselves  are  doom.  But  no,  there 
is  time  yet.  The  doors  are  not  closed. 
They  are  thrown  wide  open  and  the  vision 
ends  not  with  "  Go  "  but  with  "  Come  " : 


'      REVELATION  199 

"And  the  spirit  and  the  bride  say,  Come. 
And  let  him  that  heareth  say,  Come.  And 
let  him  that  is  athirst  come.  And  whoso- 
ever will,  let  him  take  the  water  of  life 
freely"  (22:17).  On  this  note  the  Bible 
closes,  closes  with  a  promise  and  a  prayer 
by  John  himself:  "  He  which  testifieth  these 
things  saith,  Surely  I  come  quickly.  Amen. 
Even  so,  come.  Lord  Jesus.  The  grace  of 
our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  be  with  you  all. 
Amen." 


Index  of  Authors  Other  than  Biblical 


Arnold,  M.,  39,  148,  159 

Bacon,  46,  79 

Badd,  W.  F.,  31 

Barton,  G.  A.,  96 

Bauer,  Bruno,  178 

Bentley,  Richard,  47 

Bergson,  Henri,  106 

Boeckh,  P.  A.,  41 

Bolingbroke,  Viscount,  187 

Boswell,  James,  130 

Boyle,  Robert,  47 

Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  12 1 

Browning,  Robert,  88,  99,  124,    Hesiod,  181 


Galileo,  46,  47 
Gardner,  J.  H.,  II2 
Gibbon,  Edward,  16 
Gladstone,  W.  E.,  159 
Goethe,  87 
Gray,  Thomas,  21,  22,  24 

Harvey,  William,  46,  47 
Hauptmanrij  G.,  27 
Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  126 
Henderson,  Archibald,  125 
Henry,  0.,  65,  148 
Herodotus,  73 


148,  167,  175 
Burke,  Edmund,  97 
Burns,  Robert,  24 
Byron,  Lord,  105 

Carlyle,   Thomas,  88,   148, 

191,  193 

Chateaubriand,  43 
Coleridge,  S.  T.,  89,  163 

Dante,  76 

Dawson,  Coningsby,  182 
De  Maupassant,  65 
Dickens,  Charles,  62 
Dostoyevsky,  F.  M.,  126 
Dunn,  W.  H.,  130 


Homer,  76 
Hooker,  Richard,  150 
Hughes,  Thomas,  93 
Hugo,  Victor,  191 
Huxley,  Thomas,  47 

Ibsen,  26 

James,  William,  80,  15a 
Jefferson,  Thomas,  24 
Johnson,  C.  F.,  14 
Johnson,  Samuel,  130 
Jowett,  J.  H.,  194 


Kant,  59 

Kent,  C.  F.,  44 

Kepler,  46 
Emerson,  R.  W.,  26,  148,  157,    Kipling,  Rudyard,  65,  160 

158,  167 
Eucken,  Rudolph,  14  Lanier,  Sidney,  19,  42 

Lee,  Sidney,  130 
FiSKE,  John,  39  Longfellow,  H.  W.,  21,  167 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  64  Lowell,  J.  R.,  186 

Froude,  J.  A.,  88 
Fuller,  Thomas,  55  Macaulay,  T.  B.,  191 

201 


202 


INDEX 


Maeterlinck,  M.,  27 
Markhara,  Edwin,  17,  125 
Marshall,  John,  97 
Milton,  John,  21,  90 
Montaigne,  169 
]Moore,  C.  L.,  17 
Moulton,  R.  G.,  15 
Muir,  J.,  44 

Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  46,  47 

Parr,  Samuel,  130 
Pierce,  Benjamin,  46 
Poe,  E.  A.,  16,  18,  42,  60,  61, 

65,  79,  168 
Prescott,  W.  H.,  11 

Rawlinson,  Henry  C,  96 
Renan,  J.  E.,  in 
Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  177 
Robertson,  Eric  S.,  55 
Robertson,  J.  M.,  17 


Ruskin,  John,  94 

Salisbury,  Lord,  106 
Shakespeare,    26,   63,   71,   90, 

168 
Sheldon,  Gilbert,  30 
Shelley,  P.  B.,  21 
Smith,  J.  M.  Povvis,  29 
Strindberg,  August,  125 
Stubbs,  William,  191 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  21,  104, 

148,  167,  191,  192 
Tsanoff,  R.  A.,  126 

Virgil,  181 

Walton,  Isaac,  129 
Webster,  Daniel,  97 
Wilson,  President,  114, 149, 187 
Winchester,  C.  T.,  15 


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